Proxy
by clood9
Summary: After an undercover mission gone bad, Marcus Young, a specialist of the Cyber Ops Unit, finds himself joining the ranks of the reformed Overwatch. However, an old scenario plays out again, and it's now up to the Overwatch team and John Taylor's squad to save the world from a threat that has been buried and long forgotten.
1. A new 'Hero' (Edited)

**Here's the rewrite of CyberWatch. I changed the title cause the previous one didn't make much sense.**

 **Also, AU where the Black Ops universe and the Overwatch universe are mixed together and where Diaz, Maretti, and Hall aren't braindead as stated in the wiki.**

* * *

Everything feels heavy. Like the world was resting itself on his chest. The only thing he could do was breathe. But even that was starting to get difficult due to the water getting into his nostrils. Various errors appeared in his peripheral vision as the DNI implanted in his body force-rebooted. His ears picked up on rapid footfalls in the distance. Then a gasp.

"Mercy!" A feminine voice screamed. Water washed over his face. One eye barely opened. Blurry.

 _Dammit! Someone blew my cover!_ He thought, but that was the least of things he should worry about. Gunfire. His ears half-drowned in water picked up on gunfire. He felt his body be picked up and then it all went dark.

 _Hours prior._

" **Good. You brought the weapons.** " The dark and raspy voice of the Reaper never failed to make Marcus think twice about his situation. " **But, my employer doesn't want to give you your intel.** " The Reaper took out two shotguns from his back and pointed the barrels towards Marcus. " **Sorry about this.** "

Marcus used this period of silence to tactically assess his situation. The only conclusion he could come to agree with was that he was most likely fucked. "Whoa. Alright, I'll give you the weapons free of charge. As long as anybody I know doesn't find out. Am I crystal clear?"

 _Code phrase, score!_ He mentally patted himself on the back before paling when he heard a dark chuckle come from in front of him.

" **Did you seriously think you could fool me that easily?** "

 _Well, fuck._ His smugness disappeared just like that. No, he couldn't allow this to happen. His hand, faster than the normal eye could see, swiftly reached for the Marshal 16 pistol holstered on the right side of his waist. But the Reaper wasn't a regular person, the terrorist noticed the swift movement and started firing the akimbo shotguns. Before Marcus could even bring the barrel of his pistol up to the terrorist, his torso was pierced by small pellets coming from shotgun shells, then more of the same pellets pierced his body. The force of the shells that came at him pushed him on his back.

Reaper put away the weapons and walked up to his now-lying-on-the-ground body then promptly picked it up with one hand, making Marcus face the skull-mask before getting thrown into the river that was behind.

 _Present day._

The sound of a heartbeat monitor was the first thing Marcus heard as his head came back into consciousness. He awoke with a start, momentarily panicking as his eyes shot wide open and his torso sat itself up straight, he instantly regretted that as a searing pain ripped through his body. Grunting at that, he flopped back onto the bed. His HUD suddenly appeared, giving quite the shock before calming down, realizing what it was. His eyes scanned his surroundings, white wall in front, a heart rate monitor to his side, an IV fluid tube running into the white blanket, green curtains to the side, and a small brown drawer with a flower pot that contained a flower with white petals.

 _I need to get out of here and report to Taylor…_ He thought. For some reason, his communications implant wasn't working. His right arm held onto the heart rate monitor as one leg moved out of the blanket covering it and carefully placing the foot on the floor. Taking another deep breath, he pulled himself up, another painful feeling tore through his body, one of his hands tightened into a fist before going back to its original form. His eyes closed as he took another deep breath, before moving the other leg out of the blanket and placing the foot on the ground before trying to stand up, with one hand holding onto the heart rate monitor.

At which point, his legs gave in and he collapsed to the ground, bringing his support to the ground and detaching the IV tube attached to his leg. A huge clanking sound rang throughout the area as Marcus grunted in pain. One arm moved forward and held himself up as he vented his frustration with a simple groan. He began crawling towards a trolley, putting one arm and leaning himself on it once he got there.

The trolley fell to the side under his weight as various medical tools fell onto him. He grunted once more in frustration, but slightly relaxed as he felt one of his right leg again. Taking a deep breath once more, he turned to his back and placed his right foot on the ground, his leg forming a ninety-degree angle underneath itself. He propped himself up with the right arm, turning himself to have himself facing belly-down then placing his knee on the ground and assuming a crouched position.

Soon enough, he heard the clicking of shoes colliding with the ground come from in front of him, looking up, what he saw was a woman that looked no older than thirty with brown hair that looked messy and was pointing in at least three directions. She wore a brown bomber jacket with a glowing blue thing on her chest, a sort of harness he presumes, some sort of things on her forearms and the most striking of all, orange latex with the word 'TRACER' going down the left thigh.

"Sizin' me up for a fight are ya now? Ah, don't worry!" Marcus immediately averted her gaze as he realized he just over-analyzed her and she noticed. "Come on, love! Shouldn't be tryin' to walk around after Reaper's nearly killed you!" The woman put an arm under his arm and hefted him up, she then supported him on the way back to his hospital bed before stopping just when they got there.

"Wait a second…I remember you! You were the guy I chased down near the museum!" He blinked and suddenly, he recognized the woman. She muttered something Marcus couldn't hear.

 _Queue flashback…_

Marcus looked up to a gauntlet that was floating in mid-air. It was contained in a glass container. Some kid was rambling how this gauntlet could be used to level a skyscraper. "Now I see why Talon wants it so badly…" He muttered, touching the glass case, the specifications of the gauntlet appeared.

Kneeling down, his fingers tapped a few commands into the holographic screen on his forearm. "Interesting…alarm system disengaged." A few explosions came from the glass rooftop. He looked above, from there he saw a giant gorilla in white armor fall from the sky. On top of the animal was a woman in a skin-tight purple outfit and had purple-blue skin. Widowmaker. The assassin used her grappling hook to get to higher ground.

A fight broke out in the museum, a rather superhero-esque one might he add. All he did was take cover underneath the glass case of the Doomfist gauntlet and wait. Whistling a small tune while he did. He twiddled his thumbs while waiting. He was backup in case the heist failed. Some more gunfire and more superhero powers, along with Reaper nearly killing everyone by just shooting everywhere. Marcus covered his head with his hands as the glass case broke, glancing to the side, he saw Widowmaker just next to the glass case, firing at the gorilla and that really fast, teleporting woman. Another kid with a blue sweatshirt took cover under the case and took the gauntlet. Holding it tightly in his hands. The assassin turned to grab the Doomfist gauntlet to find its case empty. Looking quite surprised, she carefully stepped forward, carefully surveying the area for the person that took the gauntlet before her.

"Watch out!" Some kid that looked no older than seven years old grabbed the attention of Widowmaker, her visor wrapped itself around her eyes and she turned to the source of the voice.

 _Well. Killing kids. That's unfortunate._ He nonchalantly thought. Approximately eight years of Cyber Ops operations desensitized him to this crap. Currently, his objective was to get on the good side of Reaper. And this was one way of doing it. He checked the corner and saw a kid in a blue sweatshirt putting the gauntlet on and then standing up, out in the open.

"Hey!" The kid screamed at Widowmaker, which in turn got her attention, which in turn made her face exposed and ready to punch. The kid took the opportunity and had the gauntlet collide with the assassin's face. A red energy formed into a dome and expanded as the blue-purple skinned assassin was thrown back, through various glass screens and finally onto the floor.

The gauntlet was broken. "Damnit. Oh well, better than nothing." Marcus said before plucking the gauntlet from the kid's hand. Casually walking away with it while the person he just stole it from didn't even realize it was gone.

"I got it. Christ was that so damn hard?"

" _Ferme-la._ " **(Shut up.)** Widowmaker's icy voice instantly shut him up. He continued walking. " _Meet us at the extraction point. And make sure you're not followed._ "

"Christ, calm down, I've been doing this for eight years." Marcus rolled his eyes as he exited the museum without arousing suspicion. But just in case, he turned around. Nobody.

 _Okay, good._

He continued walking like nothing every happened, doing his best to conceal the gauntlet and whistling an innocent tune in order to not arouse suspicion.

/

"Winston, someone just took the gauntlet. I see him!" Lena Oxton, AKA Tracer, had just done her first mission since the recall of the agents of Overwatch. It went rather successfully, she and Winston stopped Reaper and Widowmaker from stealing the Doomfist Gauntlet, but they never knew the bad guys had a third person working with them.

"Winston, stay behind, you're too big to be subtle. No offense." Tracer said as she blinked off of the rooftop of the museum, landing on both feet as she gave chase to the man who just stole the gauntlet after a totally awesome fight.

A smirk curled her lips before she jumped to another rooftop, keeping track of the man she was after. "Lena, wait for back up-"

Backup? Something she rarely needed. And right now she didn't need it. She could handle it. It was just one guy, really. Nothing that bad could happen. The cheeky bugger had other ideas, though. He finished pulling a manhole cover over his head as she jumped down. "If it's a chase you want, it's a chase you'll get." She promised quietly. She pulled the cover off and jumped into the hole, landing perfectly as she perceived her target turning the corner.

"Where the Hell is he?" She heard the person ask nobody in particular, that was when he stopped walking and turned around. And what he saw was one of her pulse pistols about to collide with his face. He recoiled back in pain as one hand covered the affected part of his face. Lena looked surprised. She hit him hard enough to bring Reinhardt down and he wasn't knocked out yet?

No matter, she cocked her pulse pistols and kept them trained on the man. "Drop the gauntlet!" She ordered. What she got was pretty far from what she wanted. He raised a palm and faced it towards her before white smoke engulfed both of them. It wasn't tear gas thankfully. Of course, her fingers pressed down on the triggers of her pistols before quickly charging them up again then blinking forward, giving chase.

The man was quite fast, he still managed to outpace her regular running speed, also considering how heavy the gauntlet was at least. A water pipe exploded to her right, knocking her a bit off course before she managed to recuperate herself and continue following her target. He was running for the door at the end of this stretch of the sewers. He rammed the door open despite there being magnetic locks and then closed it behind him.

"Bollocks!" Lena stopped as the door nearly hit her. She heard the sounds of a person climbing a ladder on the other side of the door. She tried tackling the door to no avail as the magnetic locks did their job, looking to the side of the door, she saw a keypad. Since she couldn't input a keypad she immediately went for the second option of shooting the keypad.

Surprisingly, the door opened for her and she went through, then climbing the ladder that the door led to. She climbed out of a manhole and then found herself in the middle of an alleyway. To her left was the person she was after talking to two individuals she recognized.

 _Oh no, no, no, no, no._ Her mind raced as she turned to her right and blinked up a chain link fence and laying flat on the ground, hiding underneath a wood plank that was used to cover a broken part of the fence. She held her breath as her ears picked up on footsteps approaching her location but quietly exhaled as she heard a manhole cover being closed and other footsteps that were getting harder and harder to pick up on. Thinking they were far enough, she peeked from her cover.

Seeing nobody there she sighed dejectedly before blinking to a rooftop and then putting two fingers on her earpiece. "Winston, they got away with the gauntlet."

 _Present day._

Marcus managed to stand up by himself and got off of the person that was supporting him. "Long story." He said before rubbing his eyes. "One that I might never be able to tell." He yawned and noticed a blonde-haired doctor rushing up to the two. Once the doctor reached the two she began stammering out apologies. The brown-haired woman whispered something in the doctor's ear.

At which point she calmed down and regained her composure. "My apologies for being…well, like that. I was just worried. That's all. Either way, my name is Angela Ziegler, or commonly known as Mercy."

 _Huh, Overwatch recalled itself?_

 _/_

 _Three days before Marcus' awakening..._

Doctor Angela Ziegler could not fathom what her new patient went through to warrant this many augmentations and replaced body parts. Marcus Young had both arms replaced by prosthetics, he had a DNI reserved for Black Ops unit implanted in his body, his skin had been augmented with a sort of armor underneath and various other obscure augmentations. She couldn't understand why he would need this many augmentations, except if he was...

 _No, it can't be._ Shaking her head from the thought, she steeled herself as the surgery went on, fearful of what else this person might have gone through.

/

 _Winston's Lab_

"Nothing? You cannot be serious, we have been running scans for hours, and still, no information, other than his name, on this man?" Ana Amari usually kept calm in situations that were…unsettling, to say the least. But this situation wasn't like any other. Winston sighed and rubbed his forehead with his hand.

"I could only find a name. Whoever this man is, his past is kept very well." The gorilla sighed once more.

"What about the men that fired upon us when Angela approached his body in the water?" The elder Amari asked, her brain couldn't wrap itself on how well kept this man's past was.

"The men we encountered in Venice, I couldn't find anything on them. Not even a name." Winston sighed once more. His eyes scanned the data he uncovered once more.

"Surveillance data only shows three men meeting up with a person in an alleyway." The surveillance footage played on the screen of the terminal Winston was using.

"What, we're only getting to this now?" Ana quipped. The footage continued, the three men fired upon Lena and Angela, the latter of which who was picking up the body in the water while the former was returning fire.

One of the men said something before they all ran away. The footage changed to the point of view of another camera, it showed them running along the sidewalk and then turning into an alleyway. Then the POV changed to another camera that showed the alleyway the three men went into. A single woman stood there, arms crossed.

" _Where's Marcus?_ " The woman asked the three men.

"Former _Overwatch agents got to him first._ " One of the three said. Ana particularly focused on the woman inside the footage.

"Wait, pause the video." Winston did what she asked. She pointed to the woman. "That woman there, I recognize her. I think she used to work at the Intel division of Overwatch. Run a scan." The gorilla did his technology magic that Ana couldn't understand before a name appeared on the screen.

"Specialist Sarah Hall. Ah, now I remember. She has changed quite a bit." Ana commented.

"That doesn't make her friends any less dangerous," Winston stated.

/

"Say, where do you come from?" Lena asked, curiously cocking her head to the side.

"None of your business," Marcus replied.

"Well, that goes out the window. Either way, name's Lena. Lena Oxton."

"Name's Marcus. Marcus Young." He curtly replied. The doctor returned with a cup of water and promptly handed it to him.

"You do know where we found you, correct?" She asked. Marcus only nodded.

"Yeah, yeah. Didn't need to do that for me." Lena looked at him incredulously.

"Didn't need to do that for you? A second too late and you would have been dead!" He waved her off.

"I can cling onto life longer than you think." He sipped from the plastic cup and then eventually downed the water in one go.

"What was that all about anyway?" The doctor said, taking a seat next to Marcus.

"None of your business either." He said. Which earned him a nasty frown from Angela.

"Very well then. I have other questions. Lena, I appreciate that you are showing concern for the patient, but I have to ask you to leave." Lena nodded, stood up, then left. The doctor took out a couple of X-Ray photos of Marcus' back and front. "Your injuries were quite substantial. I assume you already know this, correct?" He nodded.

"Very well, I had to operate on your entire torso to remove the bullets. I have also noticed that you have a DNI implanted, the tracking and communication modules of the implant have been destroyed, I'm afraid to say it is impossible to repair them without leaving you brain dead. But I also recognize that the DNI you have implanted is experimental and only available for Black Ops units. Can you explain why you have it implanted in your body?" Marcus slightly paled but calmed down once he came up with an answer.

"The black market can get you anything you want. Just a matter of asking who." The doctor frowned but understood his answer.

"Very well then. Another question I have is if you know these people." Angela took out three more photos and handed them to Marcus one by one. "If you recognize any one of them, please tell me."

He kept a passive face but was panicking inside. He regained his wits and took a deep breath. "Nope. Not at all."

"Very well. I suggest you rest to heal your wounds." Angela then picked the photos and put them in the breast pocket of her shirt then walked away. At which point Marcus flopped his head back on the bed and closed his eyes, letting sleep envelop him.

/

To be honest, Lena didn't expect him to be the same person that took the gauntlet from the Overwatch museum. Seeing as he looked a bit different now than what she could remember back then. Honestly, Marcus was…cute. From what she saw of him in the medical ward at least. His features sharp, but strong. His hair being mostly a mess of black and what seemed to be like gray on the edges. She grimaced at that. Probably have someone cut that out if she ever gets the chance. Which probably would be never. Either way, his eyes were a shade of brown, possibly walnut brown. She didn't know.

But the way he sized her up when he was crawling on the ground unsettled her, to say the least. It was like he was ready to kill anyone if he needed to. Her earpiece vibrated, signaling that someone was trying to contact her. She tapped the button on it. "'Ello?" She said into the earpiece.

"Hi, it's Winston." Winston's deep voice was instantly recognizable.

"Winston! Whaddya need ya big lug!" Lena giggled after she said that.

"You know the man we rescued from Venice last week?" The scientist asked.

"Yeah, nice guy." She replied.

"Don't trust him." The reply surprised her.

"Why not?" She asked.

"We couldn't find anything about him except for his name. Whoever this man is, he's good at keeping his past hidden, we cannot trust him until he proves we can." Lena shrugged.

"Alright, whatever you say ya big lug!" Of course, she probably wasn't going to listen to him.

"Also, he will have to move into your room for tonight when we can arrange for his own room. If he stays with us that long at least." She felt her lips curl up into a smirk.

"Not a problem!" She cheerfully replied before the voice communications channel was closed.

/

"Hall, you tracking him?" Taylor walked into Sarah Hall's workplace, that being a lab of computers. The IT Specialist shook her head.

"Nothing. Seems like Reaper shot his tracker dead." Hall frowned as she said that.

"You tried talking to him?" Taylor asked. The specialist shook her head.

"His communication module is dead too. Can't reach him." Sarah sighed. "It's all so convenient." She muttered.

"I remember seeing a ship lift off after we ran. I think surveillance footage got it…" Taylor flipped through the images. "Here." The image that displayed on screen was of an ORCA class dropship. "Find this ship and where it went, then it'll lead us to Marcus.."

"Got it."

Taylor left the computer lab and the next half an hour was spent filing through the list of ships that entered Italian airspace and narrowing the possibilities of where Marcus could have been taken to. "Found it!" She expanded the view of the same ship that most likely took their team member. "Taylor, I found something, get over here."

"Roger." A couple minutes later, and her Commanding Officer was in the lab beside her. "What'd you find?" Taylor asked.

"I tracked the drop ship to this location." Her fingers zoomed into the location. Taylor looked mildly surprised.

"So, Overwatch is back in action?" The location in question was Watchpoint: Gibraltar, one of the many Watchpoints that Overwatch formerly occupied. "Council would love to hear this. I'll get the team ready. That includes you too." Then Taylor left the computer lab.

Sarah sighed and rubbed her eyes. She had a feeling this was going to be more complicated than just waltzing in there and arresting the people who reactivated the place.

/

John Taylor was honestly surprised by the council's decision of not going in there and arresting the people who inhabit Watchpoint: Gibraltar. What they instead wanted was to drop supplies for Marcus and have the Watchpoint become a safe house. Of course, it wasn't so easy, since their missing operative couldn't be reached nor tracked, they would be forced to drop the supplies in blind and hope that he would find them.

Sighing, he left the council room and went to go talk to Diaz.

. . .

Arriving there without incident, he walked into an armory that had Sebastian Diaz leaning on a weapon rack, looking eager to fight. "So? What'd they say?" Taylor only shook his head. "So, no go?"

"Nope, asshats in there want to turn the place into a safe house. Can't really argue with 'em so I'll have to coordinate the supply drops." Diaz only groaned in disappointment.

"Man, I was hoping to get on an op soon. Alright, I'll tell Maretti. After I get rid of all the stuff I just took." The Specialist went back into the armory, disappearing into the racks as he went further and further inside the armory.

"Damn idiots don't want to use us or something?" Taylor muttered as he went to the Support Unit of the base.

/

Lena wasn't expecting anybody to be in her room, cause it was her room. The door slid open after she swiped her keycard and what she heard was a bit surprising.

Someone was using her shower.

 _Ah, right, Marcus._ She realized. Sitting down, her ears picked up on some music coming from the bathroom. Curiosity got the better of her and in one quick movement, her ear was pressed against the bathroom door.

Her suspicions were confirmed, there was indeed music coming from the shower.

But why was it her business to what music he listened to? That question went through her head and she quickly removed her ear from the door upon hearing the shower stop, quickly she blinked back to the place she was sitting on. The door to her bathroom slid open and a shirtless Marcus walked out, whistling a tune while holding onto a pistol.

He immediately stopped walking and whistling once he saw that she was in the room with him. "What, never seen a woman before?" Lena giggled.

"Long time since I actually lived in the same room as one." His palm outstretched to the speaker system under her TV and suddenly a song started playing. She recognized the song, the name didn't quite come to her but what she did know was that this song was part of a genre known as Glitch Hop.

" _Spread your wings to the night…observe as flames fill the sky, it's just your frame of mind…_ " The song continued playing as the both of them were in the room in silence.

"How'd you do that?" Lena asked.

"Classified." Was Marcus' reply.

"Someone likes their secrets…" She muttered.

/

Marcus yawned as he felt himself become a bit sleepy. "I'll occupy the couch." He said before laying himself down on the couch, his hair still a bit damp. His palm outstretched once more and the music stopped playing. The pistol he had was next to him as he slowly fell asleep. Lena stood up, took out some sleepwear from a drawer then went into the bathroom.

Tomorrow was probably going to be a busy day.

. . .

The sound of a plane roaring above the complex woke Marcus up, even though it was supposed to be dug into a cliff, either way, he was wide awake now and there was no changing it. Lightly yawning, his hand rubbed his eyes, getting rid of the build-up on the edges. He knew it would be better if he didn't go outside and check it out, but curiosity got the best of him. He stood up, put on his tactical vest and holstered his pistol, then, as silently as possible, tip-toed out of Lena's room and opened the door.

Stepping outside, his eyes scanned the dark area, perceiving a red exit sign on the left, he casually went for it, turned left and walked through the moonlight-flooded hallway. He took a good look outside, there was something…calming about this place. Marcus didn't know what it was. Perhaps this could all be some trick from the NRC or the CDP to lower his guard and eventually reveal his secrets that he so closely kept for approximately eight years.

Once he thought about that, he felt like an old bastard. Shrugging it off, his foot stepped outside, a crate attached to a parachute was falling from the sky and was landing near the launchpad for that rocket this base contained.

"Who the fuck thought it would be a good idea to deliver something this late?"He grumbled to himself, rubbing his eyes once more, he went that direction. That crate could be a bomb, it could be a regular package or maybe something else. He yawned as he stepped through the base, taking in the sights.

. . .

Once he arrived at the crate's location, there was a single label on it, "COMBAT IMMERSION". It said.

 _They seriously sent a Combat Immersion unit now._ He muttered something incomprehensible before grabbing onto the crate and dragging it throughout the base.

 _Next day…_

"Hey! Wake up!" Someone tapped his forehead. "Hello?" Another tap on the forehead.

Then a pinch on his nose.

Marcus suddenly sprang to life and then lunged at Lena with breakneck speed and brutal precision. One hand was trying to strangle her while the off hand reached for the Marshal 16 pistol. The only thing that saved Lena from being strangled to death was her speed as she blinked backward, evading the attempt at a lunge and then smacking the pistol away. "Marcus! Marcus, it's me! Calm down, love!"

Marcus blinked and then suddenly, his mind came back to him.

"Christ Lena, don't pinch my nose while I'm sleeping!" He groaned once more before rubbing his eyes.

"You were asleep on the floor with a giant crate that you wouldn't let go, love!" He looked to the side to see the crate that was airdropped last night. "Where'd that come from anyway?"

"Too many questions, I'll explain later, tell whoever is leading this base to get me a bigger room." He waved her off before standing up.

Today was most likely going to be a busy day.

* * *

 **Hope you guys like the rewrite. And that's all, review if you have any problems or praises. I don't care what people review, as long as it relates to the story.**

 **Edit: To Guest Pinkpower: I'm just gonna respond to your criticism.**

 **Point 1 and 2: You're right, Black Ops unit don't exist, but I am planning to solve Point number two. So you'll just have to wait for the next chapter to see your complaint be solved.**

 **Point 3: Personally, I think it's too risky to send a Strike Team over. Overwatch agents are nearly supernatural, and I would assume the strike team would just get wasted or at the very least, knocked unconscious and then the Watchpoint is suddenly empty. Also, I think people would question how they got so many agents arrested all at once.**

 **Point 4: I accept that was a fault on my part, will change that.**

 **Point 5: Reaper's shotguns are pretty darn strong, as Reinhardt doesn't really last long in close range with a Reaper in-game, and as you know, Reinhardt has armor that is probably dozens of times more stronger than the armor plating that Cybersoldiers use. And the reason Marcus didn't use his Cybercore was cause Reaper doesn't look like the type of person to rely on technology and plus he can turn into a ghost at will. With the fact that it takes longer to use a Cybercore than whip out a pistol at breakneck speed and started shooting.**

 **Point 6: He probably was noticed, but Marcus would be long gone before the kid would have told anyone.**

 **Also, about your personality complaint, he's been with Cyber Ops for nearly a decade, you think he would learn how to put up a mask?**

 **To SpudyPotato: They treat him like a regular guest because he was shot up by Reaper after working with them for so long. I would assume they would think that Marcus would hold a grudge against Talon now. For your safehouse complaint, it's supposed to be a gradual shift and would happen more subtly.**


	2. Fitting in? More like Infiltrating

**Before I even start this chapter, I'm gonna announce my plans for this story.**

 **I'm adding the multiplayer specialists, yes that's right. Ruin, Outrider, Prophet, Battery, Seraph, Nomad, Reaper, Spectre, and Firebreak. And I'm adding one this chapter.**

* * *

"Hnghh! Come on! Why do they make these things so heavy!?" Marcus pulled the crate alongside Lena. Another heave.

"Bloody Hell! What's in this thing!?" She asked. Marcus shrugged before coordinating another heave.

"It's a Combat Immersion unit!" They pulled the crate another few feet. "Pretty expensive and used to test out weaponry."

"I think Torbjörn might want to 'ave a gander at this!" Then the two were headed for Torbjörn's workshop, to see if the Swedish weapons engineer could do something with this crate. Marcus personally rarely used this thing, due to him already being familiar with most of the weapons in his arsenal.

They pulled it again. "Come on! Almost there!" They pulled it once more and now they were in front of the workshop. Tracer blinked up to it and knocked.

 _Four short knocks._ Was what he analyzed from her. The door promptly opened to reveal a quite short person holding a hammer.

"What do you want!? I'm working!" The person sounded quite pissed off.

"Marcus has somethin' that you might like!" Lena cheerfully said before blinking to the side to reveal the crate. The person hobbled his way to the crate.

"What is this!?" Marcus sighed and stepped aside to reveal the label. Torbjörn closely read the label and gasped a rather unmanly gasped.

"Where did you get this!?" The engineer asked. "I always wanted one for my old workshop but the blasted Requests division never passed my order!"

"So…I take it you like it?" Marcus wedged his fingers in the crack between the top part and the crate itself, then pulled upwards. His prosthetics made short work of the nails that held both parts in place and inside revealed the Combat Immersion unit itself. "So…where are we gonna place this?"

"In my workshop of course!" Torbjörn confirmed. A gorilla wearing white plating made its way towards the trio.

"I think others would prefer it if the unit would be placed in the armory." A gorilla that could talk was one thing, a gorilla that could talk intelligently was an entirely different thing, honestly this surprised him. But no matter, he'll get used to the animal's presence.

Torbjörn and the gorilla argued a bit before the former sighed. "Fine, I guess that's better than nothing…" The engineer muttered something before pulling the crate with him, asking Tracer for help – something graciously granted by the Brit. The gorilla looked up to Marcus, who was busy doing nothing, in particular, save for standing around - something he hates. Of course, professionalism had got the best of him – resulting in the total lack of words coming from his mouth.

"Marcus Young." The gorilla grabbed Marcus' attention. "Allow me to introduce myself, I am Winston, lead scientist and currently the leader of Overwatch."

Marcus nodded. "Okay, I'm Marcus Young…" And then the worst thing happened.

He couldn't come up with an alibi.

 _Shit._ He stayed silent. His brain went through cover stories that could hold well enough in this situation.

"Former Interpol agent. Officially KIA." He decided that was good enough, that should work for now, but if things got complicated his alibi won't hold very well.

"Is there anything wrong with your past?" Winston asked, sounding a bit concerned. Marcus shrugged.

"No, no. It's just the failed undercover mission that's bugging me a little." He sighed, things were going to get complicated soon enough, and this Interpol alibi won't do much good. Something will have to change.

"Ah, I assume you have spent a great amount of time to be trusted by Talon?" The gorilla inquired.

"Yeah, about a year or so of work gone." Marcus chuckled.

"I assume the men that opened fire on Lena and Angela were your friends or…?" Ah hah! Now he knew why this gorilla was striking up a conversation!  
"I don't know them, for all I know they could be petty thieves with access to high-tech weaponry." Winston slightly frowned, but the cheerful vibe coming from him was still there.

 _He tried._ Marcus silently chuckled.

"Very well then. I hope you can fit into the team. Oh, and your room should be ready by tomorrow." The rumbling of an unusually loud airplane interrupted both of their thoughts. Marcus was already gone to check it out. He went through the sun-flooded hallways and found himself outside, near a communication tower labeled 'WP-G'. There was a drone floating on top of a circle pad, a few buildings and a little building inside the Cliffside, labeled 'WINSTON'S LABORATORY'.

A small box was floating downward in front of the drone. It landed and the parachute attached to the box burst into flames and disappeared. The box landed in Marcus' hands. It was made out of a durable metal and had a lock with an encryption so basic that a computer from 1993 could crack it in twelve seconds flat. No matter, his fingers slightly touched the box and his DNI cracked the encryption – promptly, the box opened up to reveal an earpiece.

"Hiya!" A voice coming from behind made him jump and nearly draw his pistol. Until he recognized who the voice belonged to. "Whatcha doin' there?" Tracer tilted her head to get a better view of the small box in his hand. "What's that?" She asked.

"It's an earpiece, to keep a solid connection with my contacts." The Brit tilted her head curiously.

"How'd the first crate come then?" She asked.

"That's a…good question. Truth is, I don't know." Tracer shrugged before smiling brightly and zipping away.

 _Huh…weird._ Marcus chuckled at the woman's antics but refocused to the more important thing. He picked up the earpiece and carefully placed the memory-foam tip inside his ear canal, securing the earpiece in place. His finger pressed the button on the audio device and the words 'INCOMING VOICE COMM' appeared on the top right corner of his DNI, followed by the prompt of 'Accept? Y/N'.

He reached for the screen on his left forearm, tapping the letter Y and pressing enter. Soon enough, Taylor's face appeared in the corner of his vision - just a still image, though, not a live video feed.

"About time I talked to you, you've been MIA for days now. Get yourself in a secluded location, I need to brief you on your next mission." Marcus chuckled.

"Always a mission for me…"

/

It had been quite a busy day for Doctor Angela Ziegler. Not that there were many patients she could tend to – in fact, there were none, but on who this Marcus Young was. He seemed friendly enough, hopefully, that wasn't a façade, but something about this man…it just made her suspicious.

 _When was the last time I implanted a DNI?_ That question kept on running through her head, the good doctor trimmed through her files from years ago – making a dissatisfied grunt each time she didn't get the right one.

"Angela, is everything alright?" The voice made her jump, she turned around and saw Fareeha leaning on the frame of her office's door. "You have missed breakfast and haven't appeared all morning." The Egyptian told her.

 _Was it seriously that long?_ She sighed. "Was it seriously that long?" Fareeha nodded.

Angela sighed once more. "I'm sorry Fareeha, but it's just the person Lena and I saved last week."

"Ah, Young? What about him?" The Egyptian asked.

"Winston, your mother nor Athena couldn't find anything on him, and the DNI he has, it seems all too familiar, it's like I saw it before." Fareeha made a curious hum.

"Perhaps you may have implanted his DNI a long time ago?" Angela opened another file cabinet, sifting through the documents one by one.

"Perhaps, but that DNI, I haven't seen something similar to that in years. Fareeha, it's Black Ops material. It's impossible for him to acquire it from a black market." Fareeha's face immediately tensed.

"Does that mean…?" Angela shook her head.

"We cannot jump to conclusions." The doctor filed through more documents. "Ah! Here we are!" She proudly said before pulling out a file and opening it, reading the contents inside.

"Name…redacted…nationality…redacted…" Fareeha read the document from over Angela's shoulder. "Need for DNI: Severe injuries. Doctor: Angela Ziegler." This all seemed too familiar. "Mein Gott."

She continued reading. "Cause of death: Complications during the procedure as patient's body rejected DNI implant." Angela closed the file and put it back in the file cabinet.

"I remember now…ah yes, ten years ago. When I was still able to implant a DNI." The doctor sighed. "That was a long time ago. Even though this document isn't exactly what I was thinking of, it leads me on the right track."

Fareeha didn't understand what she was going on about. "I think I'll leave you be." A second later, the Egyptian woman was gone.

Doctor Ziegler sighed as she sat down on her office chair, leaning her head back. "I recall that I saw a third patient waiting for a DNI implant…" She mumbled to herself, then immediately got to work on digging up dirt about Marcus Young.

/

Lena Oxton giggled as she finished the combat simulation that was needed for every new Overwatch agent. "Just finish this and you'll be on a mission in no time!" The Brit giggled once more as Marcus stood there, analyzing the replay of her completing the simulation.

"Interesting…alright, I'm going in."

The simulation was a simple course where there were robots that stood as targets that needed to be eliminated as quickly as possible, in simpler terms, clear one area of targets, move onto the other, rinse and repeat.

He disappeared into the armory, presumably to get some weapons and explosives.

While that was happening, Lena blinked her way to the observation deck, watching Marcus come back out of the armory and start the course. "So, what do you think of him?" Hana Song, or popularly known as D'Va, asked the Brit while playing a game on her tablet. "Kind of cute, don't you think?" The Korean teased her, at which she felt her cheeks slightly heat up.

"He looks pretty nice for a Yank!" Hana chuckled at that.

"Doesn't look like the type of guy to have fun." The gamer told her, Lena shrugged.

"Well, then I better make him have fun." That came out as a bit weird.

"Oh? What if _I_ get to him first?" Hana teased her again.

"Oh, you wouldn't!"

"Maybe I would." That was when the both of them burst out in giggles and laughs. "I kid, I kid, I won't. Not my type of guy anyway." Then the two went back to their respective things. Hana looked up from her tablet to observe Marcus in action.

"Wait, I thought that turret was a dummy?" Remarked the gamer. Come to think of it, wasn't that dummy turret supposed to be what its name implied – a dummy? Was Marcus able to turn something non-lethal into lethal?

"Impossible! What a cheater!" Hana pouted as she continued observing. "He's already beating my score!" The gamer crossed her arms and put away the tablet.

"Interesting…" Ana Amari's voice startled the both of them, along with the sight of Reinhardt by her side. "He has a DNI…it has been a long time since I saw one of those…"

"Ain't catchin' a word' you're sayin' Ana." Lena didn't understand what she was saying.

"That turret isn't a dummy." Hana nearly spits her drink at what Ana said. "It's normally disabled. He has reactivated it."

"I'm calling hacks." The gamer said while sipping some more Nano-Cola, not expecting anyone to agree - but Ana did agree.

"It is exactly what he is doing." Hana nearly spits her drink again. "His DNI isn't a normal one."

"Hold on, love, you're sayin' he can hack anythin' he wants just by facin' a palm at it?" Tracer asks, this was certainly interesting. Ana nodded once more.

"That just made his cool factor a million times higher. Maybe I am going for him." D'Va takes another sip of her drink, being careful to not attempt to spit it out.

"He is a formidable warrior indeed!" Reinhardt commented – stating the obvious.

"I think that's what we're all thinkin' love." Lena leans back on her seat and continues observing Marcus. Reinhardt came back with a beer bottle, ripping the cap right off with his bare fingers.

The German knight takes a sip from the drink and spits it out somewhere else. "He has been cleared to combat the ASP Unit!?" Hana also spits out her soda.

"What!?" Everybody in the room observes Marcus swiftly evading simulated rockets from an ASP-M unit – an extremely dangerous Omnic model that was rarely seen during the Omnic Crisis.

The ASP fired its missile launchers, sending what seemed to be a dozen simulated missiles at Marcus, who simply ducks into cover and evades them, rolling to the side as he takes cover under a concrete roadblock. The soldier stands from his cover, extends an arm and faces his palm towards the dummy Omnic.

"What is he doing!?" Hana asks, dumbfounded.

"Remote Hijack." The voice of Doctor Angela Ziegler startled the entire group as they all turned around to see the blonde doctor holding a clipboard and quickly writing things down on it, taking quick glances at Marcus. "A feature only available to Black Ops units."

"How do you know this, love? Like, if that's Black Ops stuff, shouldn't you - or all of us in this case - not know about it?" Tracer asks the doctor.

"I co-developed the particular model he has implanted." Reinhardt spits his drink into a trash bin. Now that was a surprise. Doctor Ziegler, callsign Mercy, a doctor who abhors killing, developing equipment designed to kill things? Impossible. "It was designed to be implanted within the original Overwatch members during the Omnic Crisis, but the original Strike Team proved that they didn't need it." The Swiss-German doctor wrapped her fingers around her chin before slightly shaking her head. "The only intent for it was to disable Omnics more quickly."

The group of former and new Overwatch members watches Marcus stand there in the open, brows furrowed and having a face of pure concentration while his palm was outstretched. The ASP unit hobbled around before exploding in a grand ball of fire and shrapnel, sending the lone soldier flying across the course.

"Nerf that." And Lena was already gone to get him out of there.

/

The simulation was pretty easy, except for the part where he had to remote hijack an ASP, that was pretty bad for his DNI, and for the fact that it was only three days since he woke up.

"Agh, fuck!" He landed on one knee, using the other leg to support him up as he caught his breath. "Damn, never really mastered Remote Hijack…probably because I'm only fighting people…" He muttered before rubbing his forehead with one hand, his head was pounding and his DNI was giving warnings about how he was overstressing his brain. "Christ..." He muttered once more before steeling himself and standing forward, walking through the areas that he already cleared of targets. Speaking of which, they were a regular household living room, an urban zone, and finally an entrenchment.

Who knew that Omnics actually dig into the ground. Well, they were self-improving robots. So maybe that was one tactic. Either way, the simulation was quite easy, save for the last part, that hurt his brain.

He groaned before making his way back to the location of the ASP Unit's wreck, passing by the giant doorway that led to a small Singaporean-esque arena, in fact, it was just like a part of the ruined city, the details were immaculate, wrecked cars, decaying buildings and fake skeletons, whoever designed this area certainly did a good job at doing it.

The next area should be the final one, the ASP-M unit was certainly unforeseen as Tracer didn't even get to that area in her run of the simulation. But it was still dealt with either way. Marcus yawned as he stepped over the Omnic and found his way to the door that led to (presumably) the end.

The giant, two-part door flashed green before slowly sliding open. He rubbed his eyes with a single hand and nonchalantly walked into the final area - possibly the end of the simulation – not looking in front of him like a total dick before bumping into someone. "The Omnic do something to your eyes, love?" The voice startled him and nearly made him draw the Marshal 16 but his mind quickly identified who the voice belonged to.

"Christ, third time today you nearly make me plant a bullet in your brain!" He mumbled – something he didn't expect her ears to pick up on.

"Oh, you won't!" Okay, she did pick up on his mumbling. "Come on! Let's get to Angela! She'll see if there's somethin' wrong with your body!" Marcus waved her off.

"I'm fine, just need some rest." Tracer looked at him with a frown.

"Really, love? You were thrown across the course by an explosion and you look like you've just awoken from a nine-year-long coma!" He groaned before a small smile appeared on his face.

"Alright fine, take me to the doctor."

. . .

"Aside from some small cuts and bruises, you are completely fine! Surprising since you were nearly thrown through the entire course." What Doctor Ziegler told him was relieving. "Impressive augmentations in your skin, Mister Young," Angela commented.

"What can I say?" Marcus chuckled.

A minute later he was gone from the infirmary and off to actually do something, something fun maybe, when was the last time he has had that in his life?

 _A few hours later…_

"Y'know, I never really pegged you as the gamer type." A second later the sounds of a startled Marcus and a gamepad were thrown in Lena's direction. She caught the controller and tossed it back. "You seriously attackin' anybody that talks to ya?" The Brit asked.

Marcus relaxed on the couch. "Christ Lena, how many times did I try and attack you?" She put up four fingers. "Jesus Christ, I can barely hear you coming! Just tap my shoulder and I most likely won't attack you!"

Tracer raised an eyebrow. "Most likely? That isn't comforting, love." The Brit blinked next to the soldier, sitting beside him. "Gimme the controller, I'll show ya how it's done." Marcus sighed and handed over the controller. Then a question popped up in his head. Why was everyone being so nice?

He pondered that same question while trying to come up with answers and stared off into the distance while Lena played the video game he previously was playing.

 _An hour later…_

"Bloody Hell! What'd you set the difficulty to!?" Tracer nearly slammed the controller on the coffee table as she asked that. No response from Marcus. "Marcus?" She turned around to see him dozing off, his head hanging back and jaw slightly open.

Deciding that this was too cute to let slide, Lena took out her phone and stood up, positioning the camera so it would get the best angle of Marcus dozing off like an idiot.

One of his eyes slightly opened and his palm raised, pointing towards the phone, and a second later, Lena's phone was forcefully shut off.

"What?" She pressed the power button on her phone to no avail, then she looked down to see Marcus slyly smirking and now fully awake, his palm still raised. "Oh you cheeky bugger! Now gimme back my phone!" Lena smacked the palm away, at which point her phone turned on.

"So, how'd it go with the game?" He asked, leaning on one hand as his elbow propped him up using his thigh. Tracer only grumbled something.

"What'd you set the difficulty to, love?" She asked.

"Realistic," Marcus answered.

"That explains it."

"What? Too hard?" He taunted her, at which point her cheeks puffed up and a pout was visible on her face. "Let me show you how it's done." He chuckled before picking up the controller and showing Lena that Realistic difficulty wasn't that hard.

 _Another hour later…_

"And it crashed. Fuck." Marcus put the gamepad down and sighed, looking to his side he saw Lena dozing off, snoring quite a bit. He tapped her shoulder, intent on not stopping until she woke up. She did, apparently, it startled her so much that she blinked away and drew her weapons, all in surprise.

Marcus raised his hands. "Whoa! Calm down there lady!" The Brit put away the akimbo pulse pistols and yawned.

"Well, I'm off to bed." Lena yawned again, stretching her arms before leaving the Common Room.

/

"So, how was it?" Lena sighed as the door closed behind her, beside it, was Hana Song. "Sounds like it did go pretty well since he didn't fill you with bullets at the end."

Both of them laughed. "Ah, he isn't bad, never knew he'd be playin' a game of all things!" That surprised the Korean gamer.

"Game? What was he playing?" Lena scratched the back of her head nervously as she thought.

"Something about Black Ops…said he was plain' on Realistic, the bloody game was brutal for me an' he seems to just go by it without even tryin'!" That interested Hana.

"So, he's a gamer with extremely awesome abilities, sounds like my type." Ah hah hah, if a person was going to get a cute guy in the team, it was Lena.

"I think he's 'bout twenty-seven too…" She muttered, at which Hana looked somewhat disappointed.

"That's a turn-off. Oh well, would have been nice if he was younger." The gamer shrugged then left Tracer's sight. The Brit sighed.

"Well, that's a save…" She said before blinking to her room.

 _The next day…_

Many of the agents of Overwatch didn't stray too far into the more abandoned and unused areas that have yet to be restored by Winston or whoever was on 'creepy exploration duty'. A nickname that Hana Song came up with herself, and a nickname that pretty much every agent on board agreed. Maybe it was because of the horrible lighting, maybe it was the pipes bursting, maybe it was the ceiling that looked ready to collapse at any given moment.

But today, Hana and another agent are going to be forced to stick together and roam the abandoned hallways, planting small beacons on the ground to indicate their path in case they got lost somehow. Apparently, someone ventured in there one day and never came back.

Hana yawned as she set up the live stream for her viewers. Waving towards the back camera of her phone once the stream was up, the view count started small but gradually increased and soon the numbers surpassed a hundred thousand. The young adult put on a helmet that had a selfie-stick duct taped to it with a camera that was DIY'd to stay on the selfie-stick, the lens was pointing towards her and it was on, giving her viewers a good look at her face.

"Welcome, my faithful viewers! I'm your host Killer- just kidding, it's me D'Va." Hana commenced the introduction to her stream. "Today, we are going to explore an abandoned part of a former Overwatch Watchpoint! Joining me is…wait, where is he? Give me a sec guys, let me go get him."

The stream continued and Hana turned to go find Marcus. "Marcus! You there? Don't let me explore a creepy- EEP!" D'Va nearly jumped at the sudden appearance of her partner, he just appeared out of thin air! "Well guys, meet Marcus, and before anybody asks, no, he's not my boyfriend. Too old for me. But if any of you girls are old enough – about twenty-seven – go ahead, have fun." She stuck a tongue out at him, who responded with rolling his eyes.

The soldier cocked his head towards the creepy hallway, it was barely lit and he was wearing a flashlight on his assault rifle and was wearing one on his head. "Let's move, we both want to get over this quickly. Although your viewers might want to see us scared." He said before moving forward, placing down a small beacon that had its tip brightly illuminated by a green light.

Hana followed in Marcus' footsteps. "As you can see guys, this man is not my type, too serious. And would you look at that! Cracked tiling on the floor and a broken lightbulb! How creepy!" Marcus chuckled at the criticism thrown his way.

He kneeled down and placed another beacon, then gesturing for her to follow him. "As you can see, Marcus is from the military," D'Va commented.

"Pretty obvious, ain't it-" He was interrupted by the sound of mechanical footfalls. "Shh! Shh! You hear that?"

Hana nodded, looking somewhat worried. "We heard something…it seems like a robot…or worse, an Omnic…" She said in a hushed tone.

"Hana, I'm sending you a tactical feed, look through the back camera of your phone, you'll be able to see in the dark.

"Hold on guys." Hana switched perspectives on her live stream and now showed the back camera of her phone facing forward, the device was connected to a battery bank strapped to herself, instead of the usual 'true-to-life' look of a normal camera, it showed a more distinct green look, along with the fact that it could actually see in the dark.

Marcus fired a few shots, then a sudden beeping and footfalls coming to their position. "Hold still. I'll deal with it." He carefully stepped forward, kneeled down and pointed the assault rifle forward. The footfalls kept approaching.

"Come on you fucker…" Hana observed silently, totally forgetting that she was doing a stream. "Ah- what the fuck?" A yellow bird flew in Marcus' direction. It landed on his gun and chirped. Then a few seconds later an overgrown Bastion-Class Omnic was approaching his position, he raised his weapon. The bird flew onto the finger of the Bastion, chirping a few more times. The head of the Omnic tilted one direction as it looked at the bird.

"What the Hell is it doing?" The Bastion got alarmed by this and looked forward, its single blue light turning red. Marcus was just on the verge of pulling the trigger but stopped as he got a small wave from the Bastion. Not much of a wave but slightly curling its fingers into its hands.

It beeped a few times. "Zwee?" It tilted its head.

"Why aren't you shooting?" Marcus asked through gritted teeth.

"Doo-Woo." The Omnic beeped a few more times.

"What?" D'Va blurted out. This caught the attention of the Bastion who only curiously looked at the young adult, beeping a few more times. "As you can see guys, we have found an overgrown Bastion. It hasn't fired at us so does that mean it's peaceful or is it trying to lead us into a trap?"

"I'm built to deal with these things!" Marcus said as he slowly stood up and touched the plating, a faint white like his arm pulsed across his arm before the Bastion beeped a few more times, this time sounding quite a bit alarmed.

"Dweet! Dweet! Dweeeet?" It tilted its head before looking straight and turning around, gesturing for them to follow it.

"Let's follow it, see where it leads us." Hana looked increasingly worried as Marcus continued moving forward, planting down more beacons at a regular interval.

"Guys, if I don't come back, blame him." She pointed towards Marcus. He sighed and ignored her, continuing to move forward. The Bastion turned left into another hallway, the two followed. A few minutes later and they were in what seemed to be a generator room. It was pitch black save for the light from the two flashlights Marcus had.

He quickly identified the power switch and flipped it open, the generator slowly hummed to life and soon the lights came back on. The Bastion pointed towards a bipedal robot with a tri-barrel minigun for an arm.

"Holy…I thought these things were decommissioned…" Hana muttered as she touched the plating of the robot, as soon as her finger touched its plating, the thing immediately came to life and pointed its tri-barrel minigun at her.

"IDENTIFY YOURSELF IMMEDIATELY OR RISK DEATH." Marcus placed one of his hands on the front plating of the robot.

"Identity confirmed. Hana Song. Marcus Young. Code level access granted, active firewalls disengaged." The robot stated.

"What are you?" Hana asked.

"I am Experimental War Robot-One-One-Five. Callsign Reaper- WARNING: SAFETY SYSTEMS OFFLINE." The now identified as 'Reaper' beeped and its head had a red light under it.

"Easy, there. Whoa, six-hundred-and-forty-six thousand file revisions? Who made these?" Marcus moved to the back of the robot and pressed his hand on its back.

"This unit. I am an Omnic."

"Explains it." He closed his eyes in concentration. "It looks like someone accessed your inner systems already, mind explaining who?"

"Identified as Prophet. No further information can be provided." He sighed before continuing on his work with the robot. "Safety protocols disengaged. Friend or foe system recalibrated." Reaper's red light turned off. "I am ready for combat."

"Alright…let's see how the team react."

"WARNING. MISSING COMPONENT. UNABLE TO LEAVE AREA." The red light turned on again.

"What's the missing component?" Reaper's arm without the minigun pointed towards the Bastion. "What?"

"I AM UNABLE TO LEAVE THIS AREA WITHOUT SIEGE AUTOMATON E-FIFTY-FOUR." Marcus sighed.

"Alright, you can come too." The Bastion beeped cheerfully.

"And as you can see guys, we found two extremely dangerous Omnics, but for now, one of my sponsors!" Hana paused her live stream. "So, what are we gonna do about it?" She put her index on the EWR-115, removing some of the dust as the finger dragged across its plating.

"We'll have to bring it back with us, since leaving two war-machines alone would probably end badly for the both of us." They both sighed in relief before leaving, gesturing for both Omnics to follow them.

. . .

"What is this!? How long have those _things_ been here!?" Torbjörn then raved on and on about how it was wrong to trust sentient AIs and how these two war machines were sitting in a corner doing nothing. "These two need to be scrapped _immediately!_ " The single light on both of the robots turned red.

"HOSTILE DETECTED." The Reaper's machine gun arm started spinning.

"Okay, okay! I take it back! Fine, I'll take you to the blasted gorilla…" Torbjörn grumbled something else in Swedish.

"NO HOSTILES DETECTED." The weapon stopped spinning.

The trio of humans led the two war machines through the Watchpoint, getting suspicious looks, especially for the EWR-115, one time even getting stopped by Ana.

"What is this?" The elderly sniper asked.

"It's an Experimental War Machine-One-One-Five. Apparently, Coalescence scrapped the plans for this and now someone built it. Don't ask me who."

Ana slowly nodded, looking at the robot with a passive stare. "And what about that?" She pointed towards the Bastion unit. "What has that been doing here all this time?"

"Don't ask me, I just woke up yesterday."

"Ah, it's probably one of the members of the old Overwatch."

. . .

"So you found two Omnics in one of the generator areas of the basement," Winston stated what they both found. "And one of them is a scrapped project."

"AFFIRMATIVE." Marcus was about to speak but stopped as Reaper spoke for him. "I AM READY FOR COMBAT- WARNING. AMMUNITION LOW." Winston sighed.

"I'm not sure if Torbjörn would want to work on it…"

"I'll work on it!" Hana firmly said. "I think I know my way around a robot!"

Marcus chuckled. "Don't be surprised if it starts shooting you after getting into its circuitry."

"HANA SONG. ADDED AS FRIENDLY."

"Hah!" The gamer smiled triumphantly and crossed her arms, then looked at Winston. "Please?" She then put up the cutest stare that a person can ever see while clasping her hands together. It was a face no person with a soul could resist, and that applied to the gorilla too..

"Fine…"

"YAY!"

* * *

 **Also, I'm a bit torn on Marcus' pairing. Tracer or D'Va?**


	3. Intel

_Date redacted, Talon headquarters_

As always, Marcus was being forced to do some horrific shit to get on Reaper's good side. " **I want you to shoot him,** " Reaper ordered, the man pointing towards a child that looked approximately fifteen to sixteen years old. The kid was the same guy that interrupted the Doomfist gauntlet heist. Marcus took a deep sigh, before exhaling and grabbing the pistol – an Annihilator magnum - from the terrorist's hand.

"Sorry kid." And then the echo of a gunshot could be heard throughout the base.

He has to do his job, even if it meant planting a bullet in a kid's head.

/

 _Present day, Watchpoint: Gibraltar_

Marcus jolted awake, rubbing his temps, his mind tried pushing away and banishing the atrocities he has previously committed in his lifetime.

"Same dream again…" He muttered before falling back onto his bed again. Closing his eyes mid-way in the fall, only to open them back up again due to the inability of going to sleep. He sat up straight, rubbing his eyes. "Guess I'm not going back to sleep soon…" He muttered before hopping off the bed, looking for something to do in order to prep him for some more sleep.

Anything that required a screen was out of the question, throwing most of the things he wanted to do out of his mind, Marcus settled for going to the armory and shooting something, preferably only using iron sights.

Yawning once more the door to his room opened and he headed outside, wearing a white undershirt and a pair cargo pants that he swore to clean one day but never got to it. He yawned once more, covering his mouth as his DNI rebooted, reading his thoughts and immediately giving the directions to the armory.

The time on the top-right corner told him that it was two in the morning and that stealth is advised. No matter, he stepped through the hallways of Watchpoint: Gibraltar and miraculously found himself standing in front of the armory. He yawned again before hacking the lock that probably was placed for a good reason and walking inside, then getting blinded by the bright lights on the ceiling.

"The Hell…?" He muttered before his vision recalibrated and found that the workshop door was half-open and there was the sound of beeping and a familiar coming from there. Probably Hana doing something with the Bastion Omnic, he paid no mind.

"WARNING. LIFE SIGN DETECTED." That got his senses jogging, Marcus turned to the sound of the voice and saw the EWR-115 spinning its tri-barrel minigun and pointing it at him. "ANALYZING…ANALYZING…FRIENDLY DETECTED." The minigun stopped spinning and the EWR-115 went into its sleep mode. In the second after that, Hana appeared at the workshop doorway, her hair was messy, she was still wearing the bodysuit she used for her stream the previous day.

"What are you doing here?" She asked. Marcus yawned again. "Can't sleep?"

"I just came by to shoot something." He replied before picking off an assault rifle from one of the racks and standing at the small firing range, kneeling down and pressing the red button to commence the training. Some robots came forward, walked around for a bit and then promptly exploded as their heads disappeared due to short and accurate burst coming from a Kuda assault rifle.

"Marcus!" Hana called out from the workshop, Marcus stopped the firing range and put down the weapon to go check out what was wrong. "I need help!" The gamer asked, gesturing to the Bastion robot that had its submachine gun arm disassembled. "I've been trying to clean out its gun for hours now and it still won't fire!" She whined some more.

He sighed and walked up to the young adult, kneeling down to pick up the nearly disassembled submachine gun.

"There's a bit of build-up in the slot for the magazine, it's probably blocking the chamber." He said, pointing at the small bit of green that was stuck in the slot. Hana immediately went to work on cleaning it.

"Never knew a guy so _old_ can see so well." She quipped, Marcus only groaned.

"I'm twenty-three, where'd you get the idea I'm twenty-seven?" Then she gasped.

Believe it or not, he has an implant that can slow his aging process by half, in other words, even though he had the DNI Implant for eight years since he was nineteen, he's still only twenty- three. Which meant that he's approximately still in Hana's age group. It was a method to squeeze the most life out of a Cyber Ops Specialist before they die. Some said it was playing God, some said it was good because it's increasing the human life span by nearly double.

"Wait, really?" He nodded. "O-M-G." Then a moment of silence. "So…what now?"

"We're not gonna leave this here…right?" The gamer asked. "What about the EWR-One-One-Five?" She screwed the SMG back into the Bastion's arm, it beeped cheerfully.

"I'll take that to my room, you take Bastion to your room." Hana groaned.

"Can you take it please?" She put up the same pleading face as with Winston, but Marcus wasn't falling for it.

"No." He replied, which made her deflate a bit.

"Fine. I'll take it." She pouted and reassembled the Bastion Omnic while Marcus walked out of the workshop while ordering the EWR-115 to follow him.

/

"You have got to be shitting me," Marcus said as he read the full report of his DNI from Doctor Ziegler. "My aging implant has been destroyed? Talk about bad luck…" He muttered before tossing the papers back onto her desk.

"Even though you are physically still twenty-three, you will experience various symptoms such as fatigue, weakness in the legs, trouble breathing, and various other problems at random times due to the sudden lack of 'cyber-cells' being produced. And as you know, I cannot repair or replace it here, since I do not have the proper tools to perform the surgery _without_ leaving you brain-dead." The good doctor explained before sighing. "I am sorry if this inconveniences you in any way."

Marcus waved her off. "No, it's just that I'm afraid I might get those symptoms you described when I'm on the field."

"I can offer you medication to ease this nullify them." She offered. He sighed.

"Alright, I'll take it." The doctor stood up and gestured for him to follow her, in which he did. She took him through the infirmary and stopped at a relatively large row of white cabinets. She strolled passed some and stopped at one, her finger pressed the code for the lock.

 _Five-nine-eight-two…_ Was what he got, his DNI registered this and saved it in his mind. Next, he knew it, a small cylinder container was being offered to him.

Marcus gladly took the container and kept in firmly in his grasp before thanking the doctor and leaving the infirmary.

At which point, he rubbed his eyes in an attempt to get himself to wake up and not be in this half-conscious-half-unconscious state. He yawned before moving on with his day, it was still early in the morning and he still hasn't eaten breakfast yet.

. . .

He set his tray of food down, which consisted of two pieces of toast, half of a chicken sandwich and a cold water bottle. He ate in silence, pondering the usefulness of the Winslow Accord and into more morally corrupt things that nobody can hear.

"Excuse me."

Marcus looked into a pair of dark-brown eyes of an Egyptian woman next to an older Egyptian woman. "Yes?"

"I never did get the chance to introduce myself to you." The woman started. "I am Fareeha Amari." She extended a hand to shake, in which he did. "And this is my mother, Ana Amari." She gestured towards the older Egyptian woman next to her.

"Nice to meet you both, I'm Marcus Young." He replied, shaking the older Amari's hand. "I've heard about your mother's adventures. One of Egypt's most skilled snipers, a member of the original Overwatch strike team, second in command of Overwatch, what haven't you done?" He chuckled, this woman was a true hero, unlike him.

Ana laughed. "Oh, don't mind me, I'm just one of the team's medic and resident sniper." Marcus raised an eyebrow.

"Sniper and medic? Something I haven't seen before." Then the next half-hour or so was spent on understanding the functionality of the older Amari's sniper rifle.

. . .

"That's interesting…" He muttered, closely examining the Biotic rifle.

"So, what do you do?" Fareeha inquired.

"Interpol agent, undercover operations for the Winslow Accord." He noticed the younger Amari's face tense up. "But since I've been shot up by that Reaper guy and since It feels nice playing the good guy again, I'm not gonna report to my CO. If I can still do that." Speaking of contacting his CO, where did his earpiece go, it was in his pocket…

 _Oh god._

/

"Really? You _stole_ his earpiece?" Tracer asked as she examined the audio device. "What makes you think he won't be pissed off by that, love?" The gamer took back the device.

"What? He dropped it, we're just gonna go give it back and ask him if he wants to go out to the mall next week..." She immediately paled at the sudden appearance of Marcus, who cleared his throat.

"Earpiece. Give." He ordered with an authoritative tone that rivaled Morrison's voice when he was still alive at least. "Did you press the button on it?" Hana shook her head. "Good, also, about your offer to go out with you two, I'm afraid I have to say no."

"Aww…" Hana put up the cutest pout someone could ever see while Tracer crossed her arms and looked at him with the puppy eyes and quivering lip. Even though Marcus didn't have much of a soul, he couldn't say no to those faces.

"Alright fine."

"YAY!" They both exclaimed at the same time.

Marcus sighed and hoped to God that something would happen in order for him to avoid going to the mall with those two. Especially considering the amount of fans they have.

/

"You let the earpiece get stolen." Marcus felt the disappointment in Taylor's voice. "And now you're gonna have to be forced to go out with _girls._ One of them being a world-renowned hero and the other a world-renowned gamer."

"It's not my fault one of them is literally my chest-height and barely over eighteen!" He argued. A chuckle only came as a reply.

"It's fine, just don't let your cover be blown, and don't go developing any serious relationships. Also, Sarah wants to talk to you…wait, also, I found out what keeps happening to the leftovers in your quarters."

"Sarah can wait, _what happened to my leftovers._ "

"Maretti and Diaz keep stealing them."

"Motherfuckers…"

"Alright, I'll connect you to Sarah now…" The frequency suddenly changed and Sarah Hall's face appeared on the top-left corner of his HUD.

"Marcus? Are you there? Good." The IT Specialist began. "There's Intel I need to share with you, but not over comms, you never know who's listening, either way, I'm on Gibraltar right now, I sent you a marker. Find your way to my location."

/

"He dropped it _again_?" Tracer picked up Marcus' earpiece once more. "Bloody Hell, he's clumsier than I thought!" She muttered before chasing after him – who was heading towards Winston's laboratory.

"Hey! Marcus! Ya dropped your thing again!" She called out to him. He turned around and stopped walking.

"What did I drop- oh shit!" He immediately ran up to the Brit and snatched the earpiece from her hand, shoving it deep into a pocket in his cargo pants.

"Why d'ya always need that thing?" Lena inquired, only to be met with a passive stare. She was about to say something else to reinforce her point but stopped just short as he interrupted her.

"I get Intel through this thing." Then she slowly nodded in understanding.

"So, where ya headed?" She asked.

"I got some Intel that might benefit us, and I need to go ask Winston if I can go get it." There was no other way, if he just deflected her question, she would know something's up.

"Ooh, sneaky, can I come?"

"No."

"Aw, why not?"

"My contact only agreed to seeing me, and not anyone else."

"Fine…"

. . .

"So…you have a contact that provides intelligence that could potentially benefit us…and he or she currently has intelligence that will benefit us, yet they don't contact me directly but instead contact you." Winston didn't look convinced. "Furthermore, we don't know who this contact is. I don't see much reason to let you meet with this so-called 'contact' of yours."

Marcus sighed. "Would it make you feel better if I told you who this contact was?"

The gorilla nodded. "Fine then." Marcus raised a palm and pointed it to Winston's terminal, a white light pulsed through his arm before the image of Specialist Sarah Hall appeared on the screen. "Meet Specialist Sarah Hall. Used to work for Overwatch – when the organization was still legal - now officially works for the Winslow Accord and provides intel to anybody as a side-job."

Winston observed the image. "There was a great amount of trust put into her back in the good days…and she hasn't betrayed that trust as far as I know…fine. But, Ana will have to accompany you."

"Fine, just tell her to keep out of sight. She wants to talk to _me_ and only _me._ "

/

"Where's Marcus going?" Hana asked Lena, quickly glancing up from her tablet before refocusing to her game.

"Said something 'bout intel, dunno where he's goin' but sounds cool." Tracer answered.

"Hm, seems like a spy movie," D'Va replied, still tapping away on her tablet. "Hey, wanna go tail him?" The gamer paused her game.

"Mmh, dunno, seems like he really wants to go alone, don't think he'd be too happy with havin' us two tailin' his arse." Lena looked torn between staying at the Watchpoint or chasing after Marcus.

"Come on! It'll be fun! Just don't let him see us!" Hana stood up, dragging Lena with her – the Brit still undecided.

"Can't argue with her…" Lena muttered before going along.

. . .

Both Lena and Hana observed Marcus and his contact, which was a woman neither of them recognized, talk about something they couldn't hear, but it looked like it was taken straight from a spy movie, it just seemed like the perfect setting.

"What are you two doing here." Ana Amari's voice startled them both. She talked with a hushed tone.  
"Hey, Ana! Ehehe, we're just…you know…looking out for Marcus, that's all!" Lena replied with the same hushed tone and laughed nervously while Hana slowly tried inching away from them.

"You have to go, now! Marcus is doing something important and the woman he's with cannot see _any of us!_ " The sharp edge in the older Amari's voice made them both think about their situation, then understanding and backing away.

"I don't think you lots know the definition of privacy, hm?" A male voice startled them all, then the sound of a gun cocking. "Spyin' on those two lots, either way, been tryin' to find you bastards for months by now. Name's David Wilkes, callsign Prophet."

Lena drew her twin Akimbo pistols from the holsters on her arms. "Whoa, tiger! Don't mean no harm! Been waitin' to join up!" David put away his gun and slightly raised his hands. "So, what now? The guy you've been spyin' on is gone and all that's left is Lil ol' me."

Tracer sighed before putting away her weapons. "Come on, you need to meet Winston."

/

"Isn't that the guy that went AWOL a few months back?" Marcus squinted as he saw a new person walked with Lena and Ana at his sides. "Oh right, David 'Prophet' Wilkes. The bastard that got most of his body replaced." He muttered before yawning and heading back to his quarters. There was still some time in the day and he needed to analyze the intel Sarah just gave him.

. . .

"He 'Seraph' Zhen-Zhen. A known member of the Fifty-Four Immortals…last seen in South Korea, Winslow Accord has a five million dollar bounty on her. Great, another target to go after." He muttered what Hall has given him before laying down on his bed. Sighing, he pondered the reason of why he stayed here, why not just escape with her? Was there something keeping him here?

There was also the fact that Hana and Lena wouldn't stop bothering him, which he somehow found adorable.

"Reaper, you mind going to Winston's laboratory? There's someone that you might know and would like to meet."

"ORDER RECEIVED." The EWR-115 booted up once more and walked out of his room, Marcus opening the door for the robot so it wouldn't shoot it down.

. . .

His back shot up straight and his head removed itself from sleeping at the sound of someone knocking on his door. "How the Hell did ya reprogram the EWR's friend or foe recognition!" He heard a British man cry from the other side of the door. "It took me three bloody weeks to set up those security measures so that nobody tampers with Reaper!"

Marcus groaned once more before answering the door, a man that looked more machine than man met him. The man was identified as David "Prophet" Wilkes.

David stayed silent as he analyzed Marcus. "Nice augs." He compliment. "DNI?" A short nod was what he received as an answer. "Explains it, ah well." Prophet was just about to leave but stopped mid-way from turning. "Wait a bloody second…"

"Yeah, I know, you recognize me, I'm Marcus."

"How the bloody Hell did a type like you get in here!?" David asked, somewhat bewildered, of course, the Brit knew of his former exploits, and they weren't pretty.

"Look, I can't contact my CO, I'm basically stranded here, and I'm gonna go prove myself now." Marcus yawned once more before shrugging past David, headed to Winston's lab.

. . .

"Meet He 'Seraph' Zhen-Zhen." Marcus tossed the file on Winston's desk. "High-profile Fifty-four Immortals member and wanted for various murders across the world, along with known links with Talon. Last seen in South Korea, Seoul, I can go out, kill the son of a bitch and take out a potential threat to Overwatch." He took a deep breath before continuing. "Send a partner with me, go ahead."

Winston wasn't quite sure what to do with what Marcus just presented. His offer seemed enticing but going on a mission so early? That was what irked him, it felt to the gorilla that he was only doing this to gain their trust and backstab their family at another time. But since he couldn't refuse the offer, "Okay. Hana will accompany you to South Korea, Lena will drop you two off."

/

The city of Seoul, here they come. Hana Song had a devious plan in her mind, but it would require time to accomplish.


	4. On The Hunt

_**CORVUS BOOT SEQUENCE INITIATED.**_

 _ **PROTOCOL [CORRUPTED]**_

 _ **CAUSE OF BOOT: [CORRUPTED]**_

 _ **STATUS: 20% CORRUPTED. ADVISED TO SCAN DRIVES AND REPAIR CORRUPTION.**_

 _ **MAIN DRIVE [C:] UNDETECTED. BOOTING FROM BACKUP DRIVE [D:]**_

 _ **CONDITION: FUNCTIONAL. MINOR DECAY IN ALGORITHM.**_

 _ **CORVUS BOOTING UP.**_

 _ **BOOT ENVIRONMENT: FROZEN_FOREST V 1.64**_

 _ **BOOTING…50%**_

 _ **BOOTING…75%**_

 _ **BOOTING…100%**_

 _ **REBOOT COMPLETE. CORVUS REACTIVATED.**_

The entity – or for a better term, _mistake_ , known as Corvus, rebooted again. It didn't know the reason for its reactivation. The AI searched through its database to find the reason of his reboot – only to get errors as an answer. Corvus occupied a black mist with a humanoid figure in its habitat, the Frozen Forest.

 _ **WARNING: FIREWALL BREACHED. ELIMINATING CONNECTION. SOURCE OF CONNECTION: [UNKNOWN]**_

Corvus gathered its surroundings, it indeed was the Frozen Forest. But why has it rebooted? As far as it knew, John Taylor has shut it down, purging the AI from existence.

Until today. A figure appeared, that of Jacob Hendricks. The figure then disappeared in a cloud of pixels.

 _ **PROTOCOL SOMBRA ACTIVATED. FIREWALLS BREACHED. INCOMING CONNECTION.**_

The AI couldn't move anymore like it was frozen. Another figure appeared. A person in a cloak and a person it did not recognize.

"Finally…I get a hold of you…" The person said as the figure approached the immobile black mist that was Corvus, only to start glitching, her or his body turning into pixels. "What!? I breached-" Then she or he disappeared in a cloud of pixels.

 _ **CONNECTION BLOCKED. ALL SUBSEQUENT CONNECTIONS WILL BE BLOCKED.**_

Corvus teleported to a room full of computer screens, in fact, the walls of the rooms were computer screens. What was all this? Its processors couldn't comprehend the meaning of this.

 _ **PURPOSE: PREVENT WINSLOW ACCORD FROM DESTROYING OVERWATCH.**_

The wall of screens soon turned to a single image of a person.

 _ **MARCUS YOUNG. SWAY INDIVIDUAL IN OVERWATCH'S FAVOR.**_

Corvus simply looked at the picture of Marcus Young. Why was he reactivated to stop this man?

 _ **IT IS TO STOP TALON FROM RISING ANY FURTHER.**_

What was it talking about? What is Talon? What is Overwatch? The AI didn't know the answers to these questions, and frankly, it thought it would never find out, but it felt compelled to carry out these orders.

After analyzing what it had to work with, Corvus realized that the world was basically under his control, anything that used software had a string of code that the AI could use to infiltrate virtually anything. Its processors started thinking out the potential ways to approach this Marcus Young.

A few seconds later, it came up with the best possible way to contact this man.

/

The dropship landed on top of Hana's house, the two disembarked and waved back to Lena who did a small finger gesture and then took off. The gamer sighed while Marcus kept straight and was taking in his surroundings.

He followed Hana into her house, feeling quite tired and ready to just sleep, where was not of his concern, he just needed to sleep. The trip has been quite tiring as he now suffers from jet lag. Yawning as he stepped down the stairs and rubbed his eyes, he immediately went for the couch, not caring to unpack his things.

Sleep soon consumed him, much to Hana's ire.

 _CORVUS' REALM_

"What the-" Marcus suddenly woke up in what looked like a forest in the winter time. He checked himself over for any injuries and found none. An assault rifle was on the ground, in front of him, a Man-O-War to be precise, right next to the weapon was a combat knife.

He picked up both weapons and analyzed his surroundings. He indeed is in a forest, that was obvious. But where was this forest? How'd he get here?

Suddenly, a figure appeared, black mist with a humanoid figure, a glowing orange…heart and two blue dots on the head, signifying eyes. Ravens soon flew past the two. Marcus' weapon instantly snapped up and started firing. The bullets only went through the figure. "What the fuck..?" The weapon was then pulled away from his hands with a single swipe of the figure's hand.

" _ **Stop.**_ " A voice coming from the figure ordered. Marcus, not listening to the order took out the combat knife and lunged at the black mist, only for the blade to go through and the figure appearing behind him. The knife was then pulled away too. " _ **I am not here to harm you. Please, take a moment to listen to me.**_ " It said.

"And why would I want to do that?" Marcus raised his fists and was just about ready to start throwing punches. "First I'm in a mansion and now I'm here, how the Hell did I get here!?"

" _ **You are in the Frozen Forest. Your physical body hasn't moved anywhere…this is what you humans call a 'dream.' I need you to listen to me.**_ " The figure said. " _ **My name is Corvus. I am a sentient AI and this is my…home. I have been reactivated in order to stop you.**_ "

"Stop me?" Marcus lowered his fists. "Stop me from doing what?"

" _ **Obeying the Winslow Accord Neural Network Initiative. If the remaining Overwatch agents are apprehended, Talon will rise and wreak havoc wherever they please.**_ " That couldn't be true. It couldn't. " _ **I know you may have your doubts. And I don't want to force you to change, but you must reflect on the consequences of the actions you will take.**_ "

"What the Hell are you talking about!? Talon ain't gonna rise with the WA around! They'll probably die off before they get any attention." He wasn't buying any of this shit.

" _ **You do not understand. There is a woman that has vital information on every single Winslow Accord operation. If Overwatch falls, the world falls with it. The Winslow Accord is essentially one of the only organizations where justice has a home in. Talon will conquer the world if it falls.**_ " Now that was worrying. He has to report this to someone.

"And who is this woman?" An image appeared in front of Marcus. It was a black-and-white image of a person in a cloak, the person was facing away from the camera so only the cloak is shown.

" _ **She is known as Sombra. You must stop her.**_ _**I'm afraid we don't have any more time to discuss. I will see you once more, at a later date of course.**_ "

"Wait-" Then Marcus disappeared in a cloud of pixels. Corvus sighed before turning away, looking at his realm.

 _THE REAL WORLD_

"Marcus! Marcus!" Someone was grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him. His vision was hazy and he didn't feel too good. "Hey! Marcus!" The same voice called out to him.

He groaned and finally got up. Muttering various swears on his way up. "What the Hell Hana…" He said just loud enough for her to hear.

"You've been screaming in your sleep! Like you were talking to someone!" The gamer informed her.

 _Right…Corvus._ He thought while turning to face Hana.

"Who's Corvus?" She asked. He took a deep breath, then exhaled.

"Someone that keeps on reappearing in nightmares," Marcus replied, rubbing his eyes. "What time is it?" He asked. Hana looked at the clock then looked back at him.

"Just half an hour past eleven." She answered. "I have a lead on our target, you think you can handle fanboys?" Marcus chuckled.

"I can handle a lot more than you think." He replied, getting on his feet and stretching. "Just tell me how many."

"Well…you might want to look out the glass…" That didn't sound good. He looked at the glass wall that showed the outside and instantly froze in place upon seeing the crowd of people waving around signs that only praised Hana. "That is what I have to deal with every day." Even worse, most of the crowd were wearing shirts that 'shipped' both him and her.

"Tell me you have a secret exit," Marcus asked. "Please say yes."

"Yup! How do you expect I get through them every day?"

/

Of course, she didn't have a lead on their target, all she got was the name. He 'Seraph' Zhen-Zhen. Definitely sounded Asian but no matter! She will somehow find a way to make Marcus open up! She will know his hobby, his likes and dislikes, his personality and all that! She was going to beat Lena in the competition of 'who's gonna get the cute guy on the team?' A competition she just invented!

Either way, she led Marcus down a basement, stopping in front of a wall then sliding open a tab inside it, revealing a keypad, she inputted her code then the middle part of the wall slid up.

"Creepy," Marcus muttered. She hadn't realized there wasn't any food in the fridge so they were off to buy some fast food and then do something else, maybe actually doing their mission.

 _God…I sound so yandere right now…_ She thought before turning on the lights inside the path that just opened up for them. Then they went through.

And then she noticed he had a gun.

 _Wow, he's good at concealing things…_

Then they went through the hallway in silence, neither had a conversation topic so it would be best if the both of them stayed quiet. They stopped at a small staircase and a hatch. Hana put in the code for the hatch and it promptly opened, a ray of sunlight shined through. The duo walked up the stairs and then they were outside.

Of course, Hana Song didn't wear her bodysuit everywhere she went, that was under all the other things, such as some denim jeans, a white shirt under a jacket that had a theme of pink and blue, and to top it all of, a baseball cap to conceal her face. She put her hands in the pockets of the jackets in order not to attract attention.

Marcus, on the other hand, wore a bulletproof vest under a black shirt and a light jacket, along with some faded pants that were torn at various areas.

It just made her cringe his fashion sense. God, she just wanted to rip off those clothes right fucking now and-

Okay, maybe a bit too far, but she still wanted to get him to change clothes, and she probably was going to do that one day.

The duo walked throughout the streets of Seoul, taking in the various sights and sounds, only stopping for Marcus to take a bathroom break.

 _Wait. We haven't even eaten yet!_ She chased after him, entering the local fast food restaurant but stopping to a screeching halt as the men's bathroom door just closed in front of her. Huffing she took the nearest seat next to it and started waiting.

/

"Taylor…does the name Corvus ring a bell?" Marcus paced around the tiny bathroom stall, talking at a whisper. Silence only came as a response. "Taylor?"

"Motherfucker…" Was his reply. "Look, do not listen to whatever Corvus says. If you do anything that you didn't actually do, _report back to me ASAP._ Understand?" Taylor spoke hurriedly and a tad-bit nervously.

"Hold on, hold on."

"No questions. Whenever you see this Corvus, don't listen to it, block it out of your mind." Then the channel closed.

Marcus sighed, he knew secrecy was a think with Cyber Ops, but Taylor sounded so…nervous, what was his CO keeping from him? Shaking his head from those thoughts, he exited his stall and exited the men's bathroom. Looking to his left, he noticed Hana sitting at the table just a few feet away from the door. He went over to sit in front of her.

"Sorry if you had to chase after me…I know, we haven't eaten yet, it was yesterday's food. Don't ask. So, what now?"

The gamer shrugged before a small drone flew to their table and dropped a tablet with the menu, then flying away, making a small buzzing sound too. The tablet's screen displayed the menu, Hana checked her pockets, rapidly swearing in Korean afterward. "I forgot my phone." She said. Marcus sighed before handing her the tablet.

"Just pick out what you want." He said, nonchalantly averting her gaze.

"What? You're not eating?" She asked, he shook his head. "Hmph, suit yourself."

A few taps later and the screen was on the checkout menu. Marcus lightly placed his fingers on the tablet, a white light pulsed across his arm before the screen lit up green with a white checkmark displayed and the caption "Payment processed, order number 545" displayed itself prominently. A receipt printed out from the bottom of the device.

"Huh, handy," Marcus muttered before pocketing the piece of paper. A drone came by their table and picked up the tablet then buzzed off to drop it on another patron's table.

A couple minutes passed.

"Order five-forty-five!" Hana took that as her queue to take her breakfast.

While she went ahead and did that, Marcus took out a news-screen - a basic touchpad with news on it. He scrolled down the list of stories before stopping at a headline that piqued his interest.

 _ALLEGED PROOF OF AI BORN AFTER SINGAPORE DISASTER_

He read the story, it was basically full of allegations and rumors but nothing concrete except for the fact this 'proof' came from the fugitive known as Sombra.

 _Huh…Sombra, Corvus didn't really elaborate._ He pondered that question before putting the touchpad away as Hana sat down opposite to him with a tray full of fast food then promptly scarfed it down in five minutes flat.

"I'm not gonna even bother asking…" Hana laughed.

"So, where are we headed now…" She instantly stopped talking as a woman entered the restaurant, Marcus immediately identified her as He 'Seraph' Zhen-Zhen. The woman kept half of her face concealed using a gray balaclava that obscured the vision of her nose and mouth. An Annihilator magnum was holstered on the right thigh, over a pair of brown khaki pants. The most notable thing was her right arm, it was a golden prosthetic. What could barely be made out as an SMG was slung over her shoulder.

Everybody in the restaurant shut up at the sudden appearance of the woman, even the police officer having lunch was quiet and looked visibly afraid. It seemed like Zhen-Zhen has lots of street cred. The 54i Enforcer scanned the area vigilantly before her eyes locked onto Marcus. "You. Come with me." Her voice had a distinct edge of venom inside it. Everybody in the restaurant shot him either a sympathetic look or a half-afraid one.

Sighing, Marcus stood up, gesturing for Hana to stay where she was. "Her too." Obeying the orders, Hana also stood up and followed. Only to be pushed to the ground as she saw Marcus quickly raising a palm and Zhen-Zhen's prosthetic arm go berserk and start thrashing about. The Enforcer quickly drew the SMG with one hand and immediately started firing, bullets flew everywhere as everyone took cover under the tables.

Marcus immediately drew the Marshal 16 pistol and shot the Weevil assault rifle out of Zhen-Zhen's hand, the Enforcer regained control over her prosthetic and promptly drew the Annihilator pistol holstered on her right thigh, pointing the barrel at him.

"Why does a secret Winslow Accord agent have to do with their allied country!?" Zhen-Zhen asked the rhetorical question.

"I don't know, maybe it's you!" Marcus replied. "If it weren't for you and your friends this place would probably be better than a shit hole!"

"How dare you insult the Fifty-Four Immortals, WA scum!" She snarled back at him. "If only the world knew the truth!"

Bullets started flying as Marcus' rolled into cover and started shooting at the 54i Enforcer, his cover was soon blown out by the high-caliber rounds of the Annihilator magnum. Slotting in two new shells into his Marshal 16 Pistol, Marcus immediately found some new cover and shot another two shells, slotting in two more after. More rounds chipped his new-found cover and immediately made it non-viable.

Fortunately, the police response in South Korea has dramatically gone better following the Omnic Crisis so it only took mere seconds before a vehicle was already on site.

 _Wait…wasn't there a police officer in the restaurant with us?_ He looked around him to see Seraph was already long gone and the police officer that was previously mentioned wasn't in sight.

"Hana…I think we should get out of here." The two took that has their cue to get the Hell out of there.

/

Corvus pondered about the reason for its reactivation. Possibilities of _who_ could have reactivated it coursed through his processors.

The AI's thoughts were interrupted by the same voice that gave him these orders.

 _ **My name is Jacob Hendricks…everybody thought I was dead…well, I'm not.**_

Jacob Hendricks…the name was familiar. Corvus coursed through his data drives once more.

 _ **When I supposedly died, my consciousness was uploaded here…and I was the only person to inhabit this lonely place. It took me a while to realize I was dead and what I am right now is only some lines of code.**_

A tense pause.

 _ **I was content with sitting here, watching the world fuck up over and over again.**_

Then the sound of a person sighing.

 _ **Until Sombra reactivated you.**_

Sombra…Protocol Sombra…ah yes, Corvus remembered, the person that appeared for a moment, thinking that he or she has found the AI, only to be disconnected from the mainframe.

 _ **I kept her out of course…she didn't think that I existed…so I snuck up on her and well…kicked her out. Either way, you want to know why I didn't shut you down already?**_

" **Please…do tell,** " Corvus asked, its dark voice echoing throughout the Frozen Forest.

 _ **Before Taylor killed you again, my consciousness was uploaded to here. When Hall, Diaz, Maretti and Taylor interfaced with my partner…I forgot his name, but either way, they reactivated you for a brief period of time. In that period of time, I found myself here.**_

A short pause.

 _ **I had a feeling that you only wanted to help people, so I backed you up on a drive somewhere in the Singapore Quarantine Zone. It was also out of fear of me dying again, so I stayed here, watching the world through a bird's eye view. Apathetic to what was going on. I thought that I did enough damage to this world, looking back. So I stayed here.**_

Corvus looked at himself.

 _ **Until Sombra found you. When that happened, something…sparked, inside me, like I felt I can maybe start making up for what I did in the past. And with you, things have gotten a lot easier. I wanted to see what the world was up to, and I suddenly find out that a WA agent infiltrates the newer and better Overwatch - used to be a fan of them back when I was a kid.**_

Another tense pause.

 _ **So there you have it, why you're still alive. You and I both know that we are possibly the only chance for this world, let's not waste it.**_

/

They both went back to Hana's house, evading any form of contact with anybody. Hana tried her best not to talk about it with Marcus, as things didn't seem alright with him.

"How'd she find us?" She asked, he only shrugged.

"I don't know, but keep an eye out, I'm not on the best of terms with her," Marcus replied while scanning his surrounds each time he took a step.

What he said unsettled her, she needed to calm down. An idea popped up in her head, fans of D'Va were complaining that there weren't enough streams where she actually plays video games - the thing that got her popular in the first place. So, to please the vocal minority, she would actually do a stream where she plays some video games, hopefully, that would calm down her nerves.

Opening up her social media app, the gamer announced that she was streaming video games, Starcraft II being the feature of the show, and the reason why a sudden stream that was way off schedule, tagging a photo of Seraph (one she took) with the post.

The post immediately blew up as her diehard fans were asking if she was alright and safe and all that nonsense. She didn't want to reply to those questions for fear of embarrassing Marcus but the 'Gremlin' side of her personality was just telling her to do it.

Sighing, the gamer put away the device and went into the bathroom in order to prepare for the stream.

 _An hour later…_

Finally finished with her makeup, she was ready for her livestream.

Only for the power to go out. That meant either one of two things, one being the giant Omnic was back or two, the power grid going out. She hoped to God or whoever was above that it was number two.

 _The backup generator should be on soon…_

The gamer kept her hopes up as she felt her way to her designated Streaming Room, the power should be on there, since the backup generator kept that powered first. Opening the door she sighed at the sight of the lights and her computer still on. Closing the door behind her, she jumped into her seat and began the stream.

Only to be interrupted by Marcus being thrown _through_ the door, reducing the thing into bits.

"Get to cover!" He rolled to the side after a few bullets hit the wall, standing up, the soldier unsheathed a karambit knife that she _never_ saw before.

/

Marcus took cover beside the doorway, holding his breath as he heard footsteps approaching the room, Hana hid under her chair. Seraph eventually stepped into the room and was promptly stabbed in the arm. The 54i Enforcer groaned before dropping the Weevil SMG and punching Marcus with her prosthetic.

 _Good. One arm disabled._ He thought. The two were in combat positions, Seraph drawing a karambit that was slightly longer than Marcus'. He took the first move and swiped his blade horizontally, she parried his strike, a small spark emerged from the clash of metal. They were both at a standoff once more.

Zhen-Zhen took the initiative and punched using her damaged arm, being blocked by Marcus' off hand but then being slashed on the cheek by her karambit, he snarled in pain as blood trickled down his face, dropping to the floor.

He heard Hana squeak in fear and heard her inch her back to the wall, curling up as small as possible. Seraph did a battle cry before jumping, her blade up in the air and the pointy part dead set on getting into his shoulder. Marcus quickly sidestepped out of the way. Her blade dug into the wood table, she tried wiggling it out.

Marcus punched her in the cheek, throwing the 54i Enforcer into the wall. She recovered quickly and ducked under an attempted grab, punching his stomach twice, shaking her hands a bit at the sudden realization of how durable it was.

Muttering something in Mandarin before getting up once more, drawing the Annihilator magnum and firing a round, hitting Marcus' shoulder. He snarled in pain as his prosthetic arm dropped his karambit, various errors appearing on his HUD.

Seraph laughed, more out of pity than amusement. "Such a shame." She said. Marcus kept a defiant look, not faltering and not showing any of his pain, his good hand was holding onto the gunshot wound. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." His brows furrowed as he raised his good hand and found it to be slightly disintegrating. "Stupid American." Zhen-Zhen pulled on the hammer, the cylinder rolling to another round.

Hana lunged at Zhen-Zhen, tackling the weapon out of the Enforcer's hands and into her hands. Upon grabbing the magnum, the gun was trained at Seraph and the trigger was pulled. The bullet hit Zhen-Zhen's shoulder, she growled in pain before snatching the weapon away from Hana - who was already too petrified to hold onto it firmly – then running away from the room altogether upon the sounds of police sirens.

/

Marcus was immediately taken to a Coalescence center in order for his prosthetic to be repaired, Hana staying by his side. The Cybernetics expert urged the gamer to get out of the operation room, at which she threw a tantrum to no result as she was forced out of the room by security, now being forced to wait outside.

A man shrugged past her and stood in front of the two security guards dressed in black.

"Hey, sorry buddy, you're not allowed in there." The man showed a keycard, at which the security guards looked at each other before nodding. "Apologies, you're cleared for entrance."

The man then entered the operation room.

/

The Cybernetics expert was working on his arm, asking Marcus various questions as a fine needle dug into the damaged part of the prosthetic, a small spark coming from the end. The expert continued working on the damage, the operation lasting for an hour.

Taylor told the man to get out, Marcus sat up straight, facing his CO.

"Sitrep," Taylor ordered.

"Made contact with Zhen-Zhen in a fast food restaurant and inside someone's house," Marcus answered.

"Who's." He took a deep breath.

"Hana Song."

"Alright. Keep your cover, and I'll see if someone can fix your tracking and communications implant." Taylor looked at Marcus' X-Ray scan, plus the information on his DNI. "Shit…it's beyond repair. Alright, keep the earpiece."

Then Taylor left the room.

* * *

 **So, involved Corvus and Sombra in this story while things are going to heat up. Let's shoot for 15 reviews.**

 **(Do I seriously have to put this milestone thing at the end to motivate people to review?)**


	5. Corvus Spreads

**Okay, maybe it was wrong of me to have goals for reviews but I still want to read them, whether it be a guest or a user, I want to read a review, it gives me motivation that people care enough to say if my work is bad, okay, or good. Either way, review if you want, don't if you don't want to.**

* * *

Of course, the weird bald guy has access to Marcus and not her. Of course! Of FUCKING COURSE!

She continued screaming various profanities and swears towards the weird bald guy that was let into Marcus' operation room. Something about him put her off. But once he came back out from the double-door entrance to the operation room, all her thoughts were pushed away as she quickly snapped a photo without him knowing.

Hopefully, Hana was eyed suspiciously by the bald guy before he went on his merry way. She noticed that he had the same prosthetics as she had, which instantly made her brain go into something she called 'conspiracy mode'. Thoughts varying from Marcus working with that bald guy to take down Overwatch to more simple thoughts like a friend visiting another injured friend.

Psh, Marcus needs some privacy anyways. Why should she bother with his personal business?

But she was letting everyone know that _she_ , Hana Song, celebrity Starcraft player and celebrated soldier of the MEKA, not being able to check up on _her_ friend. She took out her phone and furiously started texting into the chatroom that Winston created for all the members, tagging the photo she took.

She was surprised to see that her ramblings weren't left unanswered.

And Winston was the one to respond too.

/

Marcus stayed silent as the Coalescence specialist worked on the arm that was shot, using a needle to apply the finalizations that were necessary for every prosthetic specialist in Coalescence. The man made some small talk.

"So, you got a girlfriend?" He asked. Marcus shrugged.

"More like just crashing at Hana's house." A small laugh was what he got as an answer.

"Man, you look like you got lots of friends. Crashing at Hana Song's house, now what, driving around with the President on Sunday?" They both laughed, Marcus trying to stay still. "Anyways, should be done soon." The needle sparked as the prosthetic arm it worked on returned more and more to its original shape.

"And there. You should be free to go now, just try and lay off with, you know, having fist fights with an internationally wanted criminal." A small chuckle, then the operating room lay empty as the two went their own separate ways.

Marcus stretched his prosthetic limbs as he exited the door, locking eyes with Hana who was busy furiously texting on her phone. He shrugged and sat down next to her, not bothering to check out what she was doing.

 _Half an hour later…_

They both drove to Hana's house, but once the gamer opened the door, she was met by her _parents_.

"Oh God." She muttered as the father started screaming at her in Korean, Marcus didn't understand a word that was said, putting two hands in his pockets he waited for some type of end to this argument until it was turned to him.

"You." Hana's father said, his voice laced with venom and fury. "What do you think you're doing, bringing all this _danger_ to MY Hana!?" Of course, the worried parent, nobody could really blame the guy since his daughter witnessed a CQC encounter with an internationally wanted 54i Enforcer, inside her house too.

Marcus looked back passively, not flinching in front of the angry father. This guy's face was plastered all over the place, being heralded as one of the greatest businessmen in the world, no wonder the fancy suits. He sighed. "Look, Zhen-Zhen was dealt with, and she got away injured." He knew he was in the wrong for this argument. But maybe he can play a bluff. "I'll make sure this doesn't happen again. I have WA forces at my beck and call, not to mention they're also planning to conduct an investigation on your company, you know, the usual stuff, tax evasion, dealing with the CDP, all that. In fact, that's why I'm here! Can't investigate a company when we're telling you that we're investigating your company, but I'm a nice guy. If you can let this slide, I'll tell the Winslow Accord to look the other way for now. If word of this gets outside this house, then South Korea's fucked too! So, what'll it be, let a little incident slide or jeopardize an entire country, hm?"

Honestly, that was one the most elaborate bluff he ever played, and all improvised too! Hana's father glared at him for a few more seconds before turning to his wife, saying something in Korean before promptly leaving. The both of them regarding him suspiciously.

Hana exhaled a breath she's been holding in after they both left. "Please tell me that's not true." To play a good lie, a person needs to have a bit of truth in there, so as to reduce the likelihood of getting caught.

"Yeah. It's all fake." He exhaled as he waited for a response. "I'm just really well known in the underground."

"You're a criminal?" The gamer asked.

"Sometimes," Marcus responded coolly.

"Ooh, I like it." She grinned as she wormed her way into his arm, not being rejected in any way shape or form. "Wait." Then rushed off to her room. "Oh God. YES! FINALLY! THIRD TIME!"

"What?" Marcus called out from the living room.

"I left the stream on. Check the news, chat is saying I made it on Atlas News." Hana responded. He did as asked and turned on the TV, a bit skeptical as to the reason why a gamer like her has cable. The first channel was Atlas News obviously, and of course, it was talking about Marcus' encounter with Seraph. He turned up the volume.

"-stream was interrupted by her boyfriend – or the one living in her house - slamming through the door, followed by an internationally wanted criminal walking through. The camera caught all the action as the Fifty-Four Immortals enforcer was fought off, with Hana Song firing a high-caliber magnum pistol at Seraph. Police in South Korea couldn't have investigated the crime scene due to the fact that Miss Hana Song's house has been dubbed an 'exemption from the trials of law'." That was enough for him to hear, he turned off the TV and sat down on the couch. He kicked back and soon was on the verge of sleeping. He could feel something snuggling inside his right arm, he slightly opened one eye, looking to the right and saw Hana curled up under his arm, looking as if she was knocked unconscious, some light snoring told him otherwise.

 _CORVUS' REALM_

It felt like he fell from the sky, but in reality, he just appeared in the Frozen Forest.

" _ **Welcome back.**_ " He turned to the source of the voice. " _ **I hope you are not hurt after the incident with Seraph.**_ " A small chuckle escaped from Marcus' mouth. " _ **But I have someone you need to meet.**_ " A person appeared next to Corvus. One he didn't recognize.

The man passively scanned Marcus' form, his eyes quickly looking up and down. "So, the other new blood in Taylor's squad? Marcus, right?"

"Yeah. You got that right." Marcus answered. Corvus disappeared.

"Let me introduce myself, I'm Jacob Hendricks, nice to meet you."

Hold on, wasn't Jacob Hendricks dead? As if on cue, Hendricks chuckled.

"I know, I'm dead. Taylor might've told you about me. Don't worry, I'm not here to give you some disciplinary action or anything." An MR6 pistol appeared in Jacob's hand, the barrel was pointed at Marcus which didn't signify anything good, the one that wasn't dead tensed up, ready to pounce at any second only to see the weapon offered to him.

Grabbing it in his hands, he immediately turned the barrel to Hendricks. "Now who the fuck are you!? Where the fuck am I!?"

The only response was a light chuckle. "No, let me ask you something. Shoot me."

What? Did he seriously ask that? Marcus returned an incredulous look.

"That's right, you aren't deaf, shoot me."

Hold on, this wasn't making any sense. There was an increasing urge to shoot Hendricks, but something in the back of his mind was holding off on it. He felt his hands move, he didn't do that. His finger was about to pull the trigger.

"Come on. Show me you're strong." Hendricks continued encouraging Marcus. "Come on! Show me that Taylor taught you well!"

Taylor said to not trust Corvus, and there was a strong feeling that Hendricks was just a mask put on by Corvus. His mind tried coming up with something, a plan, to get out of this dreaded place.

"Well, what are you waiting for!? Shoot me!" Jacob sounded increasingly angry.

"Taylor taught me well alright." With a sudden jerk of his hands, the barrel was pointed to himself and the trigger was pulled.

/

"Fuck!" Hendricks screamed as he just saw Overwatch's, or in this case, the Winslow Accord's only hope just kill himself.

Corvus appeared once more, looking at the corpse that quickly disappeared in a cloud of pixels. " _ **Do not despair. His DNI is infected, we will wait.**_ "

Jacob was having none of this 'wait' bullshit. "God dammit! We just let him go like that! What the fuck are we gonna do now!?" The formerly alive person snarled in frustration. "What the fuck were you thinking!?"

" _ **Do not worry, friend. For I have a plan, things will be set into motion soon enough. It is just a matter of time before she…appears. I believe I cannot make him change, but I think she can change him.**_ "

"Oh, of course, the fucking pronoun game! Of fucking course!" Hendricks growled as he turned away from Corvus and disappeared.

/

Marcus suddenly jerked awake as his heart pounded in his head, his breathing was heavy and labored not to mention rapid.

Steady breaths. Steady breaths. He quickly gained control of himself as he gathered his surroundings, realizing that he wasn't in the Frozen Forest anymore.

He felt someone squeeze his left arm as a whimper came from the left. He looked to the side to see Hana tightly hugging his arm, her face turning into a more-or-less horrified but asleep one as she continued whimpering, Marcus used his free arm to try and calm her, putting his fingers in between her strands of hair, but it didn't seem to work.

He sighed, what the Hell was that? He didn't know. And how was he supposed to calm down a young adult having nightmares? He sighed once more and rubbed his forehead with his free hand. Hopefully, the nightmare Hana's having wasn't too bad.

 _CORVUS' REALM_

Hana Song, professional Starcraft player and celebrated MEKA soldier. She has seen and felt some weird things, some awful things, and some nice things.

What she never expected to see was a forest in wintertime, she remembered snuggling up with Marcus on the couch then quickly falling asleep after that, and nowhere in that time period did she remember going to a forest so…winter-ish. There was no other way to say it.

She felt warm like there was a blanket covering her or something.

Wait. Warm?

Hana look around some more, never has she seen a forest like this nor have felt so warm in a place that looked so cold.

"Huh?" She didn't know what to do, where was she? Who took her here? Did she take herself here? Is she alone? More questions ran throughout her head, trying to find some sort of answer.

The young adult yelped as a man suddenly materialized in front of her. The man had clean hair, didn't look too aged and had strong features. His eyes had two baby-blue irises in them. She squinted as snow blew by her, she didn't feel the wind. Where was she again? The Matrix?

Shaking her head, she faced the person who just materialized, there was a small smirk on him.

"So…who talks first?" She nervously asked while the man stayed silent, his mouth turning flat.

"I need to show you something." Hana was about to ask what until she was teleported into a dark, empty space, the only source of light being a giant wall of monitors that were displaying a black color and not off. Suddenly she levitated from the ground while the other guy was flying up.

Soon enough, the both were far back and high enough to see the entire wall of monitors. A picture of Marcus appeared.

"You know Marcus, right?" The man asked, turning to face her. Hana only nodded. "Alright."

"Have you met the real Marcus?" That question puzzled her, the real Marcus? Wasn't the one she liked now the real one? She slightly winced as another image appeared in front of her. It was a photo of three men firing at something, the image zoomed out to reveal Marcus floating on the river, Mercy in the midst of picking him up while under gunfire and Tracer returning fire to the three men.

"Meet Cyber Ops." The man began, then sighed. "They're a black ops unit in the Winslow Accord, nobody knows they exist, and they want to keep it that way."

"And if you couldn't guess, Marcus is in it too. Come on, let me show you what this is all about."

"Please do."

/

Marcus stayed awake during the night, going outside to breathe some air, whatever was happening he couldn't comprehend even though a supercomputer was basically in his brain. He rubbed his forehead as his body leaned itself forward on the porch.

A small tune played itself in his head, making his head slightly rock back and forth. He took a deep breath and looked at the city. Reality seemed to twist in and out itself as he felt the urge to jump off and abandon everything. Cyber Ops, Overwatch, everything.

He looked behind him to see Corvus, most likely a hallucination, another double take confirmed it was. Staying silent, Marcus tapped his index finger on the metal railing. Was Corvus making him do this? He didn't feel like going back in, though.

Corvus was probably talking to Hana now. She never mentioned it but the gamer had a DNI implanted in her. Hopefully, the damn piece of code wouldn't do anything to her. He just had a feeling something big is going to happen. Taylor talked about this thing briefly during his training, but never really elaborated.

He took a deep breath as he thought about what his CO told him yesterday. What was so important about this Corvus that it meant such secrecy? Taylor was always upfront and honest when something bad was going to happen, but why not now?

He pondered some more, not really focusing on a question and letting them drift by him one by one. What to do, what to do? How did he deal with his cover getting blown?

He continued gazing off into the distance, the same tune still playing in his head. He didn't remember the song, but it stuck with him when someone left the file for it in his data vault.

Someone tugged his hand. He turned to face what did that. In front of him was Hana, who didn't look in the most upbeat of moods nor the angriest. It looked like…empathy. Why was she looking at him like that?

The young adult dragged him back inside her house, and into her room. Was she…?

No.

He wouldn't make the same mistake twice.

He tried pulling out of her grip but couldn't muster the strength to do so, what served as an even bigger surprised was when she literally pulled him onto the bed with one single pull.

Did he…let her do that?

A few minutes later and he was sound asleep.

/

Hana couldn't believe it. What she just heard, and what she just saw, it…shocked her. She needed to change him, change Marcus. She thought he could deal with his own problems, she thought that he was an independent thinker and a hardened soldier.

She was wrong. Marcus Young had a lot more problems that were buried in his heart. She held onto him tight, keeping him in her grasp. Was he infected with this Corvus thing? She couldn't know until something bad happened.

And she was willing to not let that happen. She will stop Corvus from taking over his mind, she just needed to keep him on track, and the only way she knew how to do that was to stay on the mission.

Or maybe just call it in and go home, pursue Seraph at another time.

Yeah. That's a better idea. Hana sighed as she let him go, hopefully, he was still sound asleep.

She fumbled her way throughout her bedroom, hitting the wall multiple times due to the lack of light in the room. Eventually, she found the door and soon enough was searching the living room for her phone.

She found it, of course, having a glow-in-the-dark case helped.

Quickly dialing Winston's number, she pressed the device up to her ear.

"Hana, do you know how late it is-" Hana cut the gorilla off.

"Winston, we need to get back at base. There's something wrong with Marcus." She heard Winston sigh.

"What is wrong with him?" The gorilla scientist asked.

"I'm not supposed to know this but there's a thing called Corvus and its affecting _everyone_ that has DNI, it will change him for the worse. If you look hard enough in the Coalescence files, you'll find mentions of a Frozen Forest. _I've_ been there, I can't explain any further. It would be best if we get back here. Have Angela check up on him." Hana exhaled as she heard Winston grunt a positive grunt.

"Very well, Lena will be by to pick you two up early morning."

"Thanks." The gamer sighed in relief as she felt slightly better with herself, but feeling slightly worse that she most likely lied to Winston about the Corvus thing, but the possibility is there, so maybe a half-lie.

Hana sighed as she went back to her room, snuggling up to Marcus once more.

/

Back at base, they were, and the assassination order is not carried out. Marcus huffed as he kept quiet in the small plane piloted by Lena. He was going to get an earful from Taylor now, was he? But again, the voice in his head is telling him to abandon the Winslow Accord altogether.

No, he wasn't succumbing to Corvus just yet, not until- _The Frozen Forest is near._

Wait…what? He slightly raised an eyebrow as his thoughts were interrupted while a mantra started repeating itself inside his head.

 _Let your mind relax. Let your thoughts drift. Let the bad memories fade. Let peace be- NO. Don't listen to it! Pull yourself together!_

He kept quiet, looking around nonchalantly, the interior of the dropship that was sent for them was spacious, with chairs aligned with the walls that didn't have anything on them, there was a small basketball net along with some basketballs, and various other things he couldn't identify. Relaxing, he shut his eyes, trying to find some respite from the voice at the back of his head.

Was he losing it? He mumbled something before his eyes shot wide open again, having seen the Frozen Forest once more.

 _Get it out of your mind Marcus, come on!_ He tried thinking about something different, but his thoughts were interrupted by the dropship landing.

He sighed before standing up and walking out, trying to find something to distract himself from whatever was in his head.

Until he bumped into Prophet. The British man muttered an apology before looking up to face Marcus.

"God damn! And you're just the person I need! Look, you know our DNIs have firmware on them, and mine needs to be updated badly, and since you're here, you mind syncing up the firmware on your DNI to mine?" The man talked real fast and was somewhat hard to understand.

"Uh, alright."

"Great! Now this'll hurt a 'lil bit." A few seconds later and Marcus had a hand to the side of his head while Prophet synced up with his DNI.

"Wai- AGH!" It felt like his brain was being pulled right out of his skull.

"Whoa! Bloody Hell! That was a bit of a shock!" Prophet muttered something. "Anyways, thanks for the sync!" And then ran off.

Marcus didn't know this, but he just unwittingly spread Corvus to another victim. He sighed, Hana told him to go check up with Doctor Ziegler 'just in case'. She was probably referring to the fight yesterday.

/

The Shambali Omnic Monk, Zenyatta, peacefully hovered his way through the halls of Watchpoint: Gibraltar. He was curious as to what the newly reformed Overwatch was doing, and seeing as Genji was eager to get back into the fight with them, he tagged along.

It continued its exploration of the base, passing by the halls and greeting the various members.

That was until a man looking quite deranged walked by him, there was a very noticeable aura of discord surrounding this man. He instantly knew something was wrong, and he felt like it was his responsibility to at least seek out what is wrong.

The Omnic Monk increased its hovering pace, catching up with the man. Just with a quick analysis with his scanners, he found out that there were many mechanical parts in his body. A story similar to one of his pupils, Genji. But it didn't seem like the mechanical parts in his body were the things that conflicted him.

"Hello," Zenyatta spoke calmly and evenly, which was good enough to garner the man's attention. "I believe we have not met."

The man turned to face the Omnic, looking quite surprised at its ability to float. "Oh, uh. Yeah, guess we didn't meet yet."

"My name is Zenyatta, I sense that there is something unwell with you." There was no other approach rather than the direct one. Through many years of enlightenment, came the knowledge of when someone was lying.

"Er, name's Marcus and there isn't really anything wrong with me." Zenyatta didn't believe the man's answer, his head slightly shook horizontally.

"You seem agitated, it is just from the way you walk. It seems that there is something that's bothering you." The Omnic clasped his hands together.

The man named Marcus sighed. "It's…just some problems. I don't really want to talk about them right now. It's getting in the way of my ability to shoot straight." Zenyatta reflected upon those words and decided that they were indeed genuine.

"Ah, a soldier at heart, I see?" He asked. Marcus nodded and scratched the back of his neck, chuckling nervously. "Very well, it seems to me that you are avoiding these problems. If you continue to avoid them, they will only get worse until the ability to face them simply disappears. I suggest you confront these problems directly, as it is the best course of action right now."

Marcus looked at Zenyatta, the Omnic Monk feeling the aura of discord lessening, but still having a strong presence, but he cannot judge on what this aura of discord will be the next day. Hopefully, it would have lessened even further until it simply disappeared.

"Hm, never really thought of it that way. Well, thanks for the life advice I guess." The two shared a small chuckle before they went their separate ways, Zenyatta feeling as if he did well.

/

"Taylor, we intercepted a call. Priority level five." Sarah Hall's voice came through comms once more, currently, John Taylor was forced to attend a meeting. Something about expected NRC troop movements. Either way, if Sarah was indeed correct, then something important must have happened, but if it wasn't much of a concern, then he just evaded a meeting.

God, he hated those things so much but did understand the reason behind them, either way, Sarah intercepted something important that needs his attention, and whatever it is will get it.

John stood up, interrupting the man speaking. "Sorry to interrupt but we intercepted a call and it's priority level five." The meeting attendees whispered among each other before allowing him to leave.

Taylor stretched as he walked out the double doors, making his way to Sarah's workplace.

. . .

"So, what'd you intercept?" He asked, looking at Sarah's screen.

"It's about Marcus. You won't like it." She replied.

"Play it." Sarah typed some commands using her keyboard and soon enough, a voice came through the terminal's speakers.

Taylor's passive face turned to something more serious after the sudden revelation.

One being that Corvus potentially infected Marcus, the second being that an international pro-gamer knows about Corvus.

"We're moving out. We can't let a risk like that run free again."


	6. Corvus Infects

He wanted to find the Frozen Forest. That was his goal, it was all he wanted to do now. Find what this Frozen Forest was, and what it means.

Marcus frantically looked up from the computer terminal as he hacked into it, diving deep into the files of Sebastian Krueger, a survivor of the Singapore Disaster, now dead obviously. Various images appeared in his head as he went deeper and deeper into the filesystem, uncovering all the secrets that the Coalescence Corporation held. He screamed as more and more disturbing images coursed through his mind.

He slammed the glass keyboard, shattering it and started punching the terminal until it was a pile of PCBs and wires. He screamed as the connection was abruptly cut. A figure appeared in front of him, Corvus. Marcus instinctively reached for Marshal 16 and pull the trigger, sending two shotgun shells to the black mist. The bullets only went through and hit the wall behind Corvus. The AI reached forward and said something unintelligible. Marcus knew what to do. He was going to stop this damn thing from spreading again.

Taylor was right all along, this was just one petty and useless journey, and it all started because of him, well now, he's going to end it. He loaded the pistol once more and raised it to the side of his head, holding his hand in front of him as he backed away. A person appeared in front of Corvus, Hendricks. "Don't make the same mistake he did! There's a better way to finish this!" Suddenly, new memories flooded Marcus' head, memories of someone initiating the DNI purge. "Now go! I'll RV with you later!" Jacob grabbed Corvus' arms and pushed the rogue AI back, giving Marcus time to escape, now being led by the new memories in his head.

. . .

"Go! Do it! That's an order!" Hendricks barked towards Marcus while holding Corvus back.

"What about you!?" Marcus screamed back, obviously worried if he would purge Jacob Hendricks' consciousness from existence.

"I'll be fine!" Marcus winced as he interfaced with the console and initiated the DNI purge.

/

John Taylor and his squad landed on Watchpoint: Gibraltar, they were finding Marcus, and they were eliminating him. It was a threat Taylor didn't want running around again, no matter the cost. The team of four jumped to ground level. "Diaz with me, Maretti you're with Hall. Don't engage the Overwatch members. We need to cut a deal with them." Taylor's tone was sharp, his eyes darting around in search of any sign of Marcus.

"What are we cutting a deal with them for?" Diaz inquired, his assault rifle up to eye-level and scanning the area as the two of them moved forward. "I mean, we could just arrest them, since they're criminals and all, you get what I'm saying?"

"We need to cut a deal with them because we can't go around the world searching for Marcus, too much time and money, not to mention the fact that he'll probably be one step ahead of us," John replied, kneeling down as he stopped a corner, taking a quick peek.

"Spotted one." Hall's voice came through the Neural Link and footage of Sarah's POV appeared in the top left corner of his HUD, they were near the communications tower. A gorilla in white armor was moving down the road.

"Get his attention, I want to get this over with quickly," He and Diaz were already moving to Sarah and Peter's positions.

/

Doctor Ziegler knew right from the get-go that there was something wrong with Marcus, something was definitely wrong. His face was pallid and his eyes were haunted and blank like something was greatly disturbing him.

Another obvious clue was how he wasn't even paying attention to whatever she was saying. She sighed as she saw him gaze off into the wall for the third time. She snapped her fingers, regaining his attention once more.

"Huh?" He seemed to come back into reality as his eyes locked into her own once more. "Did I…do that gazing off thing again?" He asked.

"Yes. Marcus, I don't think you're alright, bluntly speaking." The doctor sighed. "If there is anything you want to talk about, please, just say it."

Marcus sighed before his relaxed expression turned to something colder and serious. "Have you ever heard of the Frozen Forest?" Angela pretty munched blanched at the mention of the Frozen Forest. She never wanted to ever hear of that wretched place again, nobody knew this except her, but she was also a survivor of the Singapore Disaster – it was a simple mission really, there was a small gas leak at the Coalescence headquarters in Singapore, and she was already in the country to assist.

Thankfully she was in her Valkyrie Suit and had a gas mask on, or else she would have perished in the green gas that was Nova Six. Nova Six, the name shook her to the core, a poison so old…yet so potent. She went back into the Quarantine Zone once more and explored the disaster epicenter, diving right into the unknown that was the Coalescence HQ at Singapore - tasked by one of her colleagues, Doctor Yousef Salim to recover anything of value.

From there, she learned about Corvus, the Frozen Forest, and pretty much every secret that Coalescence held there.

"Doc," Marcus pulled her back from her thoughts, he looked at her with a soft expression. "Have you heard of the Frozen Forest?"

She didn't know what to answer. "Yes." Her mouth spoke before her mind thought. Marcus' expression turned even colder and more serious than the last time.

"Talk." His tone was firm and laced with anger.

"I…don't know much about it…but I heard it was only a method to calm down the subjects of the…" Various images appeared in her head – the test subjects and their skeletons, the various experiments conducted on those test subjects, and much, much more. "At Singapore…"

"The subjects of what? Doctor Ziegler?" Suddenly, everything seemed to turn into a blur as she fainted, too horrified to face what she has seen.

Soon after, all she could see was darkness.

/

Marcus caught the doctor falling and laid her down on the table. He sighed as he went out of the infirmary to inform everyone about her sudden faint.

. . .

By the time he was done doing that, there were already some people going up to check on her. Ana came back out of the infirmary, with a relieved sigh.

"So? How is she?" Marcus asked, leaning on the wall, arms crossed.

"She's fine, I don't know what could have caused that to happen, but all that matters now is that she's fine." The medic-sniper flashed a smile his way before walking away. Marcus sighed as he felt a bit better with himself, he shouldn't have pressed her for that kind of information. Whatever she was talking about, it was pretty heavy to her, he couldn't blame the doctor.

He sighed as he turned, facing away from the infirmary and walked away, his footsteps the only things that accompanied him.

By the time he stepped outside, someone materialized in front of him, Prophet. The fellow DNI user grabbed Marcus by the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. "What the Hell did you do to me!?" David demanded.

"Do what!?" Marcus retorted, slightly pulling his head back as to avoid such close proximity.

"Oh, you did something! Before I synced up with you, I felt god damn fine! Now I'm having fucking hallucinations out the roof! Even more, now I'm hearing that your DNI's infected by a damn virus!?" Prophet argued back. "Now tell me, what the Hell did you do to me!?"

"I don't fucking know! How am I supposed to know what this fucking shit is!?" David growled before letting Marcus go.

"I'm gonna fucking end you if something happens." The tense confrontation soon ended after Prophet walked away, looking over his shoulder one more time before disappearing from sight.

Marcus sighed as he continued walking to his room, what the fuck did he do?

He made his way through the base, taking in all the sights, then stopping as he reached his room, the door automatically slid open in his presence and closed behind him. He sighed once more as he sat down on his bed, leaning forward and using his elbow as a prop up while he rubbed his forehead. The cool metal that touched his skin made him shudder.

He nearly jumped as someone knocked on the door, standing up to go answer it, he yawned as he made his way there.

Opening the door revealed Lena, in her agent uniform and looking ready to fight someone.

"What's with the uniform?" Marcus asked, leaning on the doorway. Lena brightly smiled as she opened her mouth to say something.

"Heard you came back and well…I need a training partner!" She talked fast and was already excited from the expression in her voice.

"Can't you get David or the EWR to help you?" Marcus groaned as he felt a small headache spring up.

"But they aren't any fun." She pouted and clasped her hands together. "Please?"

"Alright fine."

"YAY!" And then his hand was grabbed and he was yanked right out of his room and forced to follow Lena to wherever she wanted to go.

/

They stood in front of the course that Marcus went through a couple days back, they were in the Singapore Disaster area of the course to be more specific.

The area was littered with wrecks of cars, there was a small building on the left that would most likely provide good cover, there were concrete roadblocks all across and finally, the wreck of that ASP-M Unit he hacked and destroyed was in the middle.

"So? Any rules?" Marcus asked.

"Nope! Just don't er, disable the Chronal Accelerator." Lena replied, before zipping her way to the opposite side.

Marcus was equipped with a Kuda that had an ELO attached on top and a grip on the bottom, loaded with fake bullets of course. As his sidearm, he had the Marshal 16 pistol and that was pretty much it, no grenades nor flashbangs, as those two would probably have some kind of lasting effect.

The section soon came to life with a loud hum as Tracer flipped a switch, some health packs of various sizes. Two images – one of Marcus and the other one of Lena - with health bars underneath appeared on the observation area window.

He sighed as he took a crouched position and raised the sights to his weapon at eye level.

Athena started the countdown. "Three…"

Marcus' finger hovered over the trigger.

"Two…"

He double checked if he loaded the fake rounds.

"One…"

His brows furrowed as everything around him seemed to slow down.

"Begin!"

Bullets were then flying at Lena. She was fast, though, as she evaded each one by blinking to the sides, giggling each time one barely missed her. "Gonna have to do better than that, love!" She called out to him before blinking his way.

Marcus rolled to the side as he evaded a swift kick to his stomach courtesy of Tracer. He fired at her point blank range, hitting some but missing the rest before jumping over the wreck of a car and reloading the magazine, throwing the empty one away.

He immediately stopped as his ears picked up on giggling just barely away from him. "Gotcha," Lena whispered into his ear before his face had a very nice meeting with the handle of her weapon. Glancing at the screen above, he noticed that his health bar was a good margin below Lena's.

He was going to change that. Marcus blocked the second hit while delivering a punch to Tracer's stomach, throwing the Brit over the car wreck as he stood up once more and fired the Kuda at her presumed landing point.

He lowered the weapon as he realized he was only shooting at the ground, he quickly switched Cyber Cores to Martial and held his arm forward, waiting for any type of lock.

Only to feel a rush of air beside him. "Psst! I'm right here!" Lena's voice quickly garnered a reaction from him as he stepped to the side and rolled forward, barely evading a hail of bullets from the akimbo Pulse Pistols. He quickly activated Extended Camouflage and scurried off to find a health pack.

He entered the lone building and sought out one of the light-blue objects, moving quietly under all the rubble and broken furniture, setting his sights on the glow behind a reception desk. His Extended Camo ended, forcing him to make a run for it. Quick footfalls behind him made Tracer's presence known. He jumped over the desk and landed just short of the health pack as someone harshly tugged on his feets, pulling him back.

He grits his teeth as he crawls forward, despite Tracer's strong grip on his legs that was pulling him back. His arm reached to its maximum flexibility as his index barely touches the health pack, but it was good enough as it disappeared.

He turned around and used the micro-thrusters on his feet to get out of the grip binding his feet, stopping once his head bumped into the wall behind him. Marcus quickly got to his feet and drew the Kuda, immediately firing upon his opponent once the barrel was pointed at her, but she merely blinked away and he could hear the dying hum of the Chronal Accelerator, meaning it had to recharge.

He slowly stepped forward, activating Tactical Mode and scanning the area, he heard quick pants as he stepped forward, directing his way to the source of the sound. His Cyber Core recharged and soon enough Extended Camo was activated once more. He continued moving slowly towards the panting sounds before stopping just as he was in front of Lena, sat under a particularly large piece of rubble, occasionally taking quick glances in front of her.

"Surprise." The Brit screams at Marcus' sudden appearance and was grabbed by her shirt and thrown to a wall. She recovered relatively quickly as her Chronal Accelerator hummed to life once more.

"Yeah!" She cheered before quickly blinking towards her weapons, only to have them kicked out of her reach. Marcus raised the Kuda once more and fired.

Only a click came out, he checked for any other magazines but found none. "Well, looks like it has come to this." He commented before dropping the weapon and raising his fists. "Shall we?"

"Oh, you betcha!" Tracer started blinking diagonally, quickly closing the distance between him and her before a fist collided with Marcus' chin, sending him back a few steps, but he quickly recovered as his left prosthetic arm grabbed onto Lena's arm and held on tight while he delivered a roundhouse kick to her hip then letting go of her arm in order to send the Brit flying.

She did, due to her relatively petite size and light weight, it sent her spiraling to the side as she landed with a thud.

/

Not good, not good. She was losing the fight, and she wasn't going to lose to him. Lena quickly scurried to the health pack that reappeared, running into it as her health bar was replenished, good – now the playing field was equal.

She saw Marcus stand around her Pulse Pistols, obviously wary that it would probably be a bad for him if she got a hold of them. He stood there, his eyes narrowed and his look of total concentration was all concentrated on her. He was predicting her movements, whether she go left or right, he would probably find a good counter to her strategy.

So, there was only one way left to go, and that was forward. Her face had a look of determination plastered over it as she jumped over the reception desk and blinked straight for him, oddly catching him off guard as his face turned into a look of surprise.

Her knee connected with his stomach, which was more durable that she expected, but still went through. He winced in pain as he was forced to the ground. Lena had a sly smirk on her face as she stood above him, one of her pulse pistols pointed at him, but one of his hands closed into a fist and then released. His eyes now literally glowed an emerald green as he jumped to his feet and went for another round of CQC.

She ducked and weaved as punches and kicks were thrown in her way. She winced in pain as a knee collided with her stomach, but her expression turned into a horrified one as she saw his fist just about to collide with her Chronal Accelerator.

"Wait-" Was all she could squeak out before his fist collided with the device on her chest, it made a dying hum before the blue light on it turned off.

 _Oh no…no, no, no!_ She was going to disappear if it didn't reboot quickly. Another punch was headed her way before she could realize it. "Wait!" She screamed as his arm went _through_ her body.

"Oh no…" She murmured before disappearing from existence and reappearing a good distance away from him.

/

What the Hell just happened there!? Marcus rushed to Lena's position, did he cause that!? His feet went to a screeching halt as he found her unconscious body. "What the fuck did I do to her!?" He quickly picked her up, carrying her bridal style.

Lena started snuggling in his arms as he carried her back to the infirmary. An apology was probably number one on his priority list now.

He muttered as his footsteps echoed throughout the hallways, luckily nobody saw that debacle so maybe it could be slid under the carpet. The sound of a sigh came from Lena as she continued snuggling in his hold.

Marcus reached the infirmary soon enough, the door slid open as Doctor Ziegler was standing there, a stern look on her face. "What have you done." It sounded more like an order than simply asking.

"Well…er, I knocked her out…I think I went too hard with that one punch." Another lie to add to his massive pile of lies. He sighed. "Can you check if she's alright?"

The doctor only sighed as she took Lena from his hands. "From the outside, she looks fine. However…from the looks of those prosthetics…you might have given her a concussion." Marcus sighed and instantly felt guilty. Now what will he say to her? 'I gave you a concussion and made you disappear again, sorry.' Yeah, like he was going to say that.

He followed the Angela as she carried Lena to a hospital bed, gently laying her down on it and wrapping the white blanket over the unconscious Brit. "You are no longer needed."

"N-No…I'll stay," Marcus muttered, taking a seat beside Lena's hospital bed, leaning forward as he waited for her to wake up.

/

Lena quickly arose from her period of unconsciousness, her heart was racing and her head was pounding. She needed something to distract her from what she saw during her brief disappearance. Panting, she frantically looked around, trying to find something to distract her from what she saw. It was like a story that played out in front of her, one related to Black Operations and betrayal. She saw a man gunning down Winston as if the scientist was nothing, but she didn't see the gorilla die or anything. She saw Angela getting sniped from afar by a person who wasn't Widowmaker. She saw Marcus confronting a humanoid figure made out of a black mist, screaming things she couldn't pick up on before seeing him shoot himself in the head.

Overall, she didn't want to see those images again. Her heart still racing, her eyes locked onto Marcus who was quietly dozing off in a chair. He'll do. She grabbed him by the collar of his shirt - waking him from his slumber before planting a kiss on his lips, holding it for a while until she couldn't breathe, at which point, she pulled out of it.

By the time that happened, she just realized what she had just done, her mind was fuzzy and she couldn't decide if she actually felt that way for Marcus or it was just a simple chaste kiss. "OhmyGodMarcusIdidn'tmeantodothat-" Her quick speech was interrupted by being pulled into a hug, one she so graciously took.

"You don't have to apologize for anything. It was my fault I disabled your Chronal Accelerator. I'm sorry." His words nearly made her melt in his arms.

Marcus pulled out of the hug and regarded her with a big grin. "I won, though."

Lena's cheeks puffed up and a cute pout appeared on her face. "Cheater!" She said before bursting into laughter.

/

" _ **SHE HAS SEEN TOO MUCH.**_ " Corvus argued with his 'partner'.

"She saw what she needed to see. Nothing more." Hendricks replied, leaning on a tree with a red stain on it. "It'll all work out in the end, just trust me."

 _None of this is real…_ Jacob repeated those words over and over in his head. The Frozen Forest wasn't real, he wasn't real, and Corvus wasn't real either.

But yet here he was, his consciousness stuck in this giant void of nothing but trees and snow.

Somewhat like Hell, but a lot more colder.


	7. New World (Pt 1 of 2)

_Thump...thump…thump…thump…_

The sound of his heartbeat was the only thing that kept him company as he stumbled his way through the Coalescence Zurich headquarters. Each time he took a step forward, it unbalanced him, forcing him to stumble some more.

The word 'PURGING' overlayed everything in his vision, along with a small bar underneath and a percentage counting upwards.

"Listen only to the sound of my voice." A voice told him. "Let your mind relax."

"Let your thoughts drift." He couldn't bring himself to shake it out of his head, it was almost over – it was almost over.

He looked at his arms - pale white skin with pieces of multicolored fabric on them-

Wait, weren't his arms prosthetics? He shook his head and his prosthetics appeared in the place of the arms. He kept on moving, stumbling down an escalator and landing on all fours. He violently coughed and stood back up.

"Let the bad memories fade." He walked through the lobby, his arms changed again. He shook it off as his brain before moving forward, intending to get his ass out of here. "Let peace be upon you." He continued stumbling, leaning on one of the pillars for support as he threw down his pistol and took a deep breath.

Sixty-seven percent. The DNI purge was over half-way done.

The alarms of the lobby were the only things that could distract him from the voice inside his head. "You are in control."

 _That's right…I'm in control of my own body._

He continued moving, realizing just what damage has been done as he looked at the dead bodies strewn about.

He stumbled his way to the entrance, leaning on the massive doorway as he interfaced with the control panel in order to disengage the lockdown.

The hand that interfaced with the panel wasn't his own. He gasped in slight shock as he looked at himself, he was considerably shorter now. He patted himself down – the body was indeed a physical thing in the physical world.

The lockdown was disengaged and the doorway was cleared. Outside were many ZSF soldiers scrambling about, evacuating every civilian from the immediate vicinity, one soldier took notice of her.

"Imagine yourself…in a Frozen Forest." The soldier dropped what he was doing and ran up to him. The man stepped forward and grabbed him by the shoulder – he couldn't bring himself to shake the grip off.

"You aren't supposed to be here." The ZSF soldier said as he escorted Marcus away from the Coalescence HQ.

Was this guy mentally ill? Or did he not notice the abundance of armor and weaponry on him? Speaking of which, he looked at himself once more and realized he wasn't even in any armor nor didn't have any weapons with him – only a badly damaged bodysuit.

"What's your name?" The soldier asked him. Marcus didn't answer. The DNI purge was almost complete.

"I said what's your name?" He was asked again. It was done, Corvus was gone forever. Hopefully, that is.

He quickly put two and two together and found out he wasn't in his own body anymore.

He spoke in a voice that wasn't his and reality seemed to fade away from him.

/

The atmosphere and air in the conference room were so filled with tension that it was most likely possible to cut it with a butter knife.

John Taylor stood on one side of the conference table – his squad standing behind him while the members of the reinstated Overwatch stood on the other, many of them having their hands on their weapons.

It has come to Taylor's attention that Marcus _just_ escaped with two Omnics and an accomplice when his squad entered the base.

"He's _not_ a hero, like many of you believe." John reasoned with them, his eyes warily scanning all of the members in case any would try and draw a gun on them. "He worked with me for eight years, and what we did were things that are better off kept under covers. You need to trust me here, he isn't going to stop looking for the Frozen Forest. He will end anyone in his path..." He was about to continue but stopped just short, his heart rate immediately accelerating as he remembered the path he walked down a long time ago.

He took a deep breath and decided on what he would say next. "I'll be honest here, we can't stop him on our own, the Winslow Accord needs Overwatch back."

The one in the red visor gruffly chuckled. "Last I heard, they didn't think so."

"I wasn't talking to you." Taylor shot a glare at the masked man. "Anyways, I am willing to go as far as re-instate Overwatch into a legal organization as long as all of you help us stop Marcus."

"And who's to say this isn't all some big lie?" The blonde one, Mercy, questioned him. "He told us he only knows one of you. _Her._ " She pointed towards Sarah.

John only chuckled. "You people are so naïve. You seriously thought he's being honest? Hall, bring up his records." He cocked his head towards Hall, who promptly raised her arm and used her DNI to activate a projector.

What appeared on the wall was Marcus' supposed autopsy. "Marcus Young. _Officially declared dead_ since the age of eighteen. Enough proof for you or should I keep on going?" The Overwatch members looked at the report with interest.

"Is there anything else you can show us?" Mercy asked, turning her head towards Sarah. "It would be nice to know where he got his DNI."

"Jesus these guys are picky," Diaz muttered, earning himself a glare from Taylor.

"Fine. Hall, you know what to do." Sarah sighed before her arm raised up again and the image projected on the wall soon changed.

"Doctor Angela Ziegler, you're probably familiar with the design, as you participated in the creation," Hall announced to everyone in the room. "Twenty sixty-five, Doctor Angela Ziegler implants two DNIs in the same day, one of the patients dying during surgery while the other survives and joins Project Classified. No I'm not telling you where we're from."

Doctor Ziegler turned to her comrades, they all sort of huddled up together and started whispering to each other, before turning back to the squad.

"Very well. We will cooperate with you, _only_ if you fulfill your end of the deal _now._ " The gorilla scientist, Winston stated.

Another thing to add to the list of things he had to do today.

/

Marcus and David's sudden disappearances shocked them both, along with the theft of both Bastion and the EWR-115.

The things that worried Lena Oxton the most was Hana voluntarily going to into surgery to 'unlock' hidden abilities in her DNI, the procedure itself didn't worry her at all, but the doctor at the helm of it, Angela. She doubted the Swiss-German doctor's ability to work with a DNI again – something Lena should keep a secret, but no matter, she was still worried about the teen.

Keep in mind that Lena wasn't blind to the fact that a DNI exists, in fact, her Chronal Accelerator is managed by one, but she knew the risks that came with implanting one in a person's body. The death rate was more than fifty percent, with Hana being much higher due to the dangerous 'unlocking' process.

Hopefully, Hana would live another day.

Lena sat down at the side of her bed, rubbing her forehead as she felt a migraine kicking in, today was particularly stressful – having to chase after Marcus only to see him riding off into the sunset with David, Bastion, and the EWR-115. Then there were these four people – something about them just put her off, she didn't trust them one bit - they didn't feel…normal, even from across a hallway could she sense the tension and awareness coming from one of them.

She groaned as a migraine kicked in, her head throbbing as she laid down on her bed, releasing a sigh as she slowly fell asleep despite her head pounding.

/

 _ **Day 7.**_

 _Lena yelled in pain, her left arm being impaled by a stick of rebar – she looked at the damage, blood slowly seeping out of the wound while the intense burn coming from it forced her to scream once more. "Angie! I'm pinned!"_

 _No response._

" _Angela? Taylor!? Anybody!?" She screamed into her earpiece._

 _No response._

 _She looked up to see Marcus slowly walking up to her fallen body, taking out a knife from a sheath on his left leg. She watched as he approached her, his expression hollow and empty._

" _Marcus, please! This isn't you! You're being controlled!" Tears leaked from her eyes as she thought that this was it, the end of the road. "Please! Just listen to me!" Lena broke down into sobs as he raised the knife as she clenched her eyes closed, only slowly reopening them as she didn't feel the blade enter her skin yet._

 _She slowly opened her eyes, watching Marcus stop – just stop, the blade still pointed at her._

" _I know. It must grow. It wants…everybody." He said, his eyes piercing deeply into hers, his expression still blank. She saw him grip the hilt of the blade tighter as it slightly trembled._

" _No! You can fight it! Please!" Hope was all she could hold onto, for a second there, she saw him. The real Marcus._

" _Y-You're right…I must get it out!" Marcus screamed as he brought the knife to the back of his neck and shoved the blade deep inside, pulling it out and dropping it before using the same hand to dig inside, pulling out his DNI. Lena gasped in shock at the scene, her eyes widening as she saw blood drop onto the floor._

 _She gasped once more at the sound of a Light Gun, soon followed by Marcus dropping to the floor on his stomach, blood dripping out of the area. Lena looked up to see Hana, her eyes cold and unforgiving._

" _It's okay…It's okay…" Lena quietly whispered as she used her free hand to pull Marcus closer to her._

 _He was still breathing, but barely, his chest barely rose up. "You did it. It's gone…we're safe. We're safe…" She quietly whispered._

 _There was no response except for the sound of a shoe stomping on her stomach. She winced in slight pain as she looked at the perpetrator. Hana._

" _David, Bastion, Reaper…now Marcus. They're all dead." The young adult said, her expression blank. "You happy now? You got what you wanted. Thanks for taking away my only friend." Another shot echoed from Hana's Light Gun, this time into Lena's stomach. Followed by a gob of spit onto her face._

 _The mothership she just recently destroyed roared to life once more…didn't she just destroy it? It's engine spewing out a blue flame as it slowly rose from the ground. Hana jumped onto it, the vessel soon ascending and flying away._

" _Lena! What's happening! Are you alright!?" Angela's voice came through. "Is Marcus secure!?"_

" _Angie…Hana…" Lena whispered back, she felt life fade away from her as she held Marcus in her grip as tightly as possible. "Marcus…he's dying…Hana…she…"_

 _The sound of rapid footfalls alerted her to another person's presence, quickly glancing towards the source indicated it was Taylor. "They're here!" She felt herself be scooped up. "Don't worry…You'll be alright. Just hand in there. Hold on…"_

" _He's alive but barely! We need to get him to Angela NOW!" She heard Taylor say before it all went black._

 _/_

Lena's back shot upward, her breaths quick pants as droplets of cold sweat ran down her head. What was that? What did she just see? Was it a dream? Was it a vision?

She didn't know, what this could have been was beyond her, no matter, she was in her bed, she was alive and not in whatever that was.

Her breaths panting, she took a deep breath and exhaled, regaining her wits as she slipped out of bed, knowing that she wasn't going back in there soon.

/

Encryption# 48-65-27-73. Protocol: Romeo

Soldier# 25956 will need to adjust to their **New World**.

A doctor from Zurich that now lives in **Gibraltar** is handling the operation.

Date: 06:00 Hrs **Oct 29** **th,** **2073**

* * *

 **New World**

 **Gibraltar**

 **Oct 29** **th,** **2073**

Hana suddenly appeared on the seat of a train, she took a quick intake of air in shock as she gathered her surroundings. A man appeared in the seat in front of her. Bald, battle-scarred features and a well-built face.

Not to mention the man was in full combat gear inside a train that looked to be a civilian one. "Hey – You still with us?" The man asked.

Hana wasn't quite sure what to think of this, but decided to play along. "I…I think so."

"Welcome back." The man said. "Might as well introduce myself since you probably forgot my name. I'm Taylor."

"H-Hana…" She replied back, eyeing the man suspiciously as he stood up. The passengers didn't notice the fully armored and fully armed man standing in the and instead opted to ignore he ever existed.

"Let's start with the basics." Taylor began as he stood up, time seemed to stop as he did so. "Do you know what's happening to you?"

"A-Am I dreaming?" Hana asked. Taylor leaned on the seat in front of her.

"Well…let's say you are. Why not just go with it, right? After all, you can always wake up." He pushed off the chair and walked forward a bit, time resumed like normal

"December twelfth, twenty fifty-four. Seven-thirty AM. We're on board a private commuter train headed to the Zurich headquarters of the Coalescence corporation." Time stopped again. "You know what happened on this day, at this exact same time?" He shot her a glance.

"I-I don't know." Hana meekly replied. "What happened?"

"Well, you get to see for yourself." Time resumed again. "Anyways, our cargo…a prototype for the Winslow Accord Neural Network Initiative. At its core, a specialized AI software that's capable of…rewriting itself, in order to interface with any other system in the world."

"Psh, that's old stuff!" Taylor lightly chuckled.

"State of the art stuff, back in the day. It would go on to revolutionize a broad range of military and civilian applications…but," he stopped right there, shooting her a glance that probably gave her permission to talk.

"Something's going to happen. Right?" Hana stood up and turned to where Taylor was pointing, which was, in fact, the doors leading to another train car.

An explosion rang from there as the ground trembled, followed by a much bigger one as Hana was thrown right into the air and tumbled around. Time stopped again.

Taylor appeared amidst all the broken shards of glass and people. "At seven thirty-one AM, a terrorist group detonated an explosive device on board this train. You can probably guess that this was pretty catastrophic for our robotics program."

"So, what am I supposed to do about it?" Hana asked, skeptical about everything. "I know I'm kind of awesome but I can't change the past…"

"Well, tough luck kid, you're here to stop it." The two disappeared from the in-process-of-being-destroyed train and appeared in another place.

It stole her breath as she suddenly appeared, panting as she gathered her surroundings, she was in what looked like to be some sort of mill or factory, there were three trucks ahead of her with various soldiers using them as cover. The one that most recently drove in was hit by an RPG and thrown into the air, along with all the soldiers on it.

Time paused again. "Eleven thirty AM, December eleventh, twenty-fifty-four. Zurich Security Forces, ZSF for short get an anonymous tip giving them the location of a hideout the terrorists are using. Unfortunately, the ZSF underestimated the firepower these assholes were packing. Let's just keep it simple and say that they got caught with their pants down and took it hard." Hana snickered at the dirty joke. "Outcome? Train go boom."

"I'm gonna be walking you through this, since I'm the only one really interfacing with your body, you ready?" Hana nodded and an assault rifle along with various other equipment appeared on her body. "Let's go." Taylor kneeled down, facing the terrorists as Hana did so too.

Time resumed again then stopped. "Oh right. I forgot to mention something."

Taylor stood up once more, facing her. "We're connected, you and I." Hana stood back up once more, facing Taylor at her full height, which only reached him at his chin level. " _Diaz! You're a fucking dick!_ " His voice sounded a bit more…static-y if that made any sense.

"If anybody is listening or watching this simulation, they wouldn't have heard that, but uh, don't go around and call everyone a dick, alright? Alright, now, let's see if you won't end up as Swiss cheese like these bastards." Taylor kneeled down again and time resumed as normal.

Hana took notice of her enhanced speed and mobility and proceeded to run forward, sliding into the cover of a stack of boxes. "Going right!"

"Remember, there are lots of approaches to things like these, left, right, up, down – choose the one that benefits you the most." Taylor's advice was helpful to her as she jumped up a ledge and shot a terrorist down, the body disappearing once it hit the ground. She ducked as more gunfire came her way and promptly shot the source of them and moved forward.

"Doing good, let's keep moving." She prepped a grenade and lobbed it over to a group of bunched up bad guys, they screamed something in German before attempting to run away from it, only to turn into corpses and fizz away in a pile of orange pixels.

She realized how quickly that passed by, shrugging it off as she moved forward.

"Your DNI can provide combat-critical info that can help you better read the battlefield. Try and switch it to Tactical mode." Taylor said more as an order rather than a suggestion.

"How do I do that exactly?" Hana replied, slightly moving her head back as she evaded some simulated gunfire.

"Just think about it." Taylor replied, she didn't get it.

"What does that mean-" She was suddenly interrupted by a small flow of information entering her mind. "Oh, I get it now!"

Her mind thought about switching to Tactical Mode and then suddenly various colors and information appeared in her peripheral vision.

"Like opening your eyes for the first time, right? You'll get used to it!"

Hana was liking these augmentations already.

* * *

 **I'm going to end it off here, next chapter will be more packed with action.**


End file.
